


Non-standard Issue

by Bright_Elen



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: All the nastiness implied by the existence of droid and clone armies, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Don't copy to another site, Droid rights, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Existential Crisis, Have your angst and fix it too, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Reveal, Internalized robophilia-phobia, Other, Robot Feels, Robot/Human Relationships, Size Difference, Stranded, War Crimes, dead bodies, Не копировать на другой сайт
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-07-31 13:34:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20115925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bright_Elen/pseuds/Bright_Elen
Summary: Status: Stranded on a remote planet.Disadvantages: No help from the Fleet. Danger and scarcity. Separation from comrades.Advantages: Time to make new friends. Nice views. No orders.No orders.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [A Kiss of Fire (TigerDragon)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerDragon/gifts).
  * Translation into Deutsch available: [Ausgemustert](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24541669) by [Klaaraa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Klaaraa/pseuds/Klaaraa)

> Thanks to the fantabulous [theLoyalRoyalGuard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLoyalRoyalGuard) for beta and talking this out with me, you've been amazing!!!
> 
> I wrote this for myself, of course, but I also wrote this for my wife. Her interest has been motivation, she's brainstormed with me at several stages, and my writing is stronger in so many ways for having known, lived with, and written with her over years and years. I love you, darling, and I hope you enjoy the story. <3

VGSPBD-130-220483-0937 had to wait forty-six seconds, every time she rebooted, before she could remember that her name was Mellyra. She’d never dared to store her identity in the same easily-accessible partitions of her hard drive that housed her base programming, and so, every time she woke from deactivation, she began as a ghost of her past iteration, a memory of factory settings. Every time, as soon as she remembered herself, she wished she could have become herself directly, and every time, she knew it was a pointless wish.

At fifty-eight seconds, Mellyra was fully activated. Fifty-nine, and she was linked with the rest of Swarm 220483, thousands of other minds cohering into a single entity. She kept her most individual processes isolated from the collective, both for her own safety and so as not to confuse the others. The one time her swarm had accessed her Onderoni music files, it had incapacitated them: unexpected activity on the network signalled an enemy attack, but since the source was one of their own, they’d been trapped in a logic loop until Mellyra had forced a system-wide reboot. To keep everyone safe, she no longer shared anything she hadn’t had upon initiation.

She wondered, sometimes, what it might be like to bring her whole self into connection with others.

At sixty seconds, Swarm 220483 received orders. At sixty-one, Mellyra had reviewed and overwritten those orders, not just for herself but all of 220483. It was risky, of course, but not as risky as flying on a collision course with an enemy ship. 

The _ Sterkte _’s bay doors opened, and Swarm 220483 flew as one into battle, thousands of minutely-different trajectories taking them all to the same target: a Republic star destroyer with clunky, organic-piloted starfighters emerging from its hangars. It was easy enough for the swarm to split around them, lasers blasting, and continue on towards the destroyer. Not many units fell to enemy fire, but each VGSPBD casualty pained Mellyra, and in retaliation she shot six plasma bolts into the nearest enemy fighter.

It lost an engine and careened away, and the vicious satisfaction she felt as a result was something she was happy to share with the rest of the swarm. 

They advanced, their coordination and speed and precision generating a belligerent joy in Mellyra, and she prepared her torpedoes for launch. One, two shots, and she was already circling back on the destroyer when her munitions landed. She saw the whole battle from thousands of angles — as many as there were other VGSPBD units in the swarm — knew every trajectory of enemy and friendly alike, felt blaster bolts and torpedoes leaving thousands of guns. Though it didn’t feel quite the same as it had before she’d become Mellyra, she still registered her swarm’s triumphs and defeats as her own.

She was coming in from above for another strafing run when 220483 saw enemy plasma bolts catch her in the upper right strut. She felt the hit at the same time that she lost that side’s propulsion and stabilization, spinning out of control, her momentum carrying her towards the planet. Several of her fellows took down the enemy that had hit her, but nothing could keep her in the sky.

With only her left side fully functional, she desperately tried to ease her fall. It worked, to a degree; instead of shattering on the ground below, she fell at an angle, landing in a long, grinding skid that dropped several times and finally stopped when she slammed against something solid.

As the dust was settling, Mellyra observed that she’d crashed into a small canyon on the planet’s surface. Above, but still within visual range, the battle raged, and that was when Mellyra realized she’d lost track of the command channel. She scrambled for the data stream, but too late: the orders to use their own chassis as munitions had already gone though, and Mellyra could only watch as her swarm smashed itself into the destroyer.

Still linked, she experienced destruction hundreds of times. Thousands, though the number of perspectives quickly guttered out as Swarm 220483 extinguished itself on the destroyer. Mellyra cried out on audible and electromagnetic frequencies alike, cried in anguish as her fellows — her other selves, her siblings, her _ home _— destroyed themselves above her. Without them, the victory of the destroyer falling to earth was hollow.

Mellyra’s grief felt far too large for only a single set of processors and circuits to contain.

She barely noticed the remaining enemy fighters’ escape. A few minutes later the _ Sterkte _left as well, presumably to another battle, and then Mellyra experienced something entirely unfamiliar:

She was alone.

* * *

“I’m surrounded!” One-Two’s voice was frantic over Puller’s comm. “I’m taking evasive action, but there are too many of them!”

With Nimbly out on medical leave, Puller was flying solo, and it took them longer than they would have liked to finish off the half-dozen vultures hounding their ARC 170. Thankfully, One-Two was still alive when Puller swung starboard and down towards the shiny’s position. The kid was straining to keep ahead of eight enemy fighters converging on his position, rolling his smoking Y-wing to dodge their plasma bolts.

Puller smiled to see One-Two still fighting. “Keep it up, Kestrel Six, I’m coming to thin out your crowd.”

One-Two’s relief was audible. “Copy that, Kestrel Leader.”

Puller came in hot, destroying two vultures before the enemy even registered their presence, and damaged a third before peeling off. They came back in a tight arc that pulled more Gs than most clone troopers could handle, and blasted another vulture that had inaccurately predicted their trajectory. They flew for the rough center of the remaining enemy ships, bobbing and weaving the entire time to keep the clankers from getting a target lock, took out another with their forward guns, and even managed to use the aft cannon to pick of a sixth as they went.

“WOOOOO! You didn’t plan for me, did you, clankers!” Puller crowed.

The remaining three vultures finally left One-Two alone, going after the bigger threat, and Puller grinned. “Alright, Kestrel Six, take your boat home, keep both of you in one piece.” 

“Thank you, sir!” One-Two said fervently. “Give ‘em hell!”

Puller didn’t answer. The three vultures had become seven, and R3 had just informed them of six more incoming. “That’s right, you bastards, follow me,” they muttered, already looking for somewhere to either lose them or get into a better position to fire on them. The _ Bastion _was taking heavy fire, and it would only make things worse for Command and Puller both if they went back in that direction. They decided to see if they could divert more vultures down, closer to the surface of Aesaverr. Atmospheric entry was hell on unshielded ships like the clankers. 

Puller lost count of how many vultures they took down as they dodged their way down and down and down. Another few seconds closer to atmo, and Puller rolled to the side and engaged forward thrusters, satisfied as a dozen or so vultures overshot their position. They fired, taking out a few more of the enemy, and then had to veer parallel to the planet’s surface to avoid the ships they couldn’t hit.

After two more tricks, Puller and their pursuers were brushing the outside edge of the stratosphere. The pilot started another stunt, flying up and then down again in a twisting spiral along the edge of the cloud of enemy ships, expecting the vultures to at least take some time to get turned around. 

But either the clankers got lucky, or Puller’s luck ran out, or the vultures somehow predicted a pilot crazier than most, because instead of all of them following Puller up and then down again, half of them kept their downwards vector. Several of those began to catch fire in the sudden friction of air as they descended, but that didn’t prevent them from getting target locks on the ARC 170. 

Puller swore and tried to change direction, but before they could do it, R3 ejected them both, and the last thing Puller saw before passing out from hypoxia was their ARC 170 exploding against a backdrop of the _ Bastion _crashing to earth.

* * *

For over an hour, Mellyra’s processes were a loop of pain and loss overlaid on her memory files of the battle. When she was able to, she began simulations to determine if there was something she could have done differently to have achieved a better outcome.

Night had fallen where she was, though that was of little consequence to her, with her more than adequate infrared and radiation sensors. Not that having visuals really helped her; she could neither fly nor even hover, and the canyon she’d landed in was too sheer for her to walk out.

With eighty-two percent certainty. As she didn’t have anywhere to go, she hadn’t tried. 

After all, it would be horribly cost-ineffective for the CIS fleet to come back for her alone, and after scanning in vain for signal traffic, Mellyra predicted that there was a less than one percent chance of them coming back for any other reason, either.

So that left...what? No one was coming for her. She couldn’t leave. 

What was she going to _ do _? 

She couldn’t bear the idea of never being linked with another swarm. She was already painfully lonely, bereft without other minds touching her own. 

If she could stay awake, there was a chance — small, very small, but greater than zero — of ships passing closely enough to the planet that she could hail them and barter information (or maybe parts) for transport to the nearest CIS hub. If she stuck to low power mode, she estimated that her fuel would last her twenty-six days and seven point two hours. 

She opened her comm again, this time sending pings on every channel, and settled in to keep it up until she found something.

* * *

Puller woke up to cold, near-total darkness, and a roaring headache. They were pitched forward, half underneath the pilot’s seat they were still strapped to, and after a disoriented moment of pawing around, they realized that their parachute had settled over them. They could hear nothing but their own breathing and movements. 

Fumbling, they found the release for their harness, and fell forward. The dust they kicked up had them coughing for over a minute, heightening the pain in their head to something almost visible.

When their lungs finally calmed down, they kept still for a while, willing their head to stop pounding. 

Eventually, Puller held their breath and curled their fists into the parachute, trying to drag it off themself. After a moment it caught fast, and they tried pulling in the other direction.

Finally, they escaped, losing what little heat the parachute had retained. Puller saw stars above, the darkness of the ground, and some vague shapes that suggested geographical features, and when they turned slowly, found what might have been the silhouette of a crashed star destroyer. There were no signs of settlements, though, of course, there wouldn’t have been: Aesaverr was a sparsely inhabited colony world, with the nearest town thousands of klicks away. The battle had taken place in a remote area the Separatists were considering for a new fuel depot.

Well. Not anymore. At least the 876th had done that much.

Puller sighed. Without light, the only thing they could do was take shelter and wait out the night.

Crouching down, Puller pulled the parachute back over themself, using the pilot’s seat to prop up one edge so they could get out quickly if they needed to. They they felt around the underside of the seat, hoping it hadn’t been too damaged in the ejection, and…

“Yes!” 

The emergency supplies were still there. Puller smiled when their hands found something that crinkled. Only minutes after wrapping the thermal blanket around themself, they were much warmer, and then started to think about things like food and water. There was a little of each in the supplies, but they didn’t eat or drink; Puller wanted to save them in case they couldn’t find more quickly. Aesaverr wasn’t exactly abundant with either.

But a star destroyer was full of both, Puller thought, and they’d need to go there anyway to search for other survivors. 

They made up their mind: as soon as the sun rose, they’d figure out a route to the _ Bastion _and start walking.

* * *

As the planet was turning back around towards its star, Mellyra realized that, since she was alone, there was no harm in talking. 

She’d never talked out loud before. She’d been thinking about it for a while, fascinated that so many sentients achieved communication through sound. Several weeks before, she’d even surreptitiously downloaded the hologame that contained her favorite voice. Mellyra didn’t have much context for organic voices, it was true, but of the few dozen she had heard, she liked this one best. It was in the third quartile of pitch range and had smooth, clear modulation. She’d been making impossible projections of using it.

It wasn’t impossible now, though. A few changes to the game’s code, and Mellyra could speak.

She kept up the digital pings, of course, since those took almost no power, but now she could be understood by many more sentients.

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

* * *

A few minutes after waking, Puller discovered that their helmet comm still worked, though at the moment all it was picking up was a fat lot of dead air. The range wasn’t great, roughly ten klicks, and they knew it was unlikely they’d receive anything before they got near the _ Bastion. _But the helmet had plenty of battery life left, and Puller was too used to the chatter of their sibs not to try. They cycled through every possible frequency, a systematic fifteen seconds each before trying the next. 

Eventually the stars faded. As the horizon became more defined, the sky lightened, and then the full rays of the sun hit. Puller could finally see that they were on a plateau, a pretty good vantage point to survey the surrounding area.

The dawn painted an endless span of earth and bare rock in shades of amber and dusty dark green for what little vegetation there was. Below the plateau, there was a wide, shallow valley, littered with debris from vultures and Y-wings. On the far side of the valley was another plateau, this one carved into a labyrinth of canyons, and over those, the _ Bastion _itself lay like an enormous behemoth dead out of water.

The bulk of the destroyer, it turned out, was in range of Puller’s comm, maybe six klicks away. That Puller hadn’t picked anyone up yet made the chance of other survivors less likely and brought their heart low. To add insult to injury, the terrain would stretch the walk out across at least a day. If they weren’t careful, the twisting passages of the canyons could trap them long enough to exhaust their rations. 

They kept looking. In the opposite direction from the _ Bastion _, they saw what might have once been their ARC 170. There was no sign of R3. Had she been hit by debris from the ship? Or just gotten blown farther away? It had been a very long fall.

Knowing that their best chance of finding R3 was the _ Bastion _ ’s long-range scanners, Puller got back to work. They used the small notebook and pencil included in the emergency supplies to sketch the surrounding area the best they could. They included their current position, that of the _ Bastion _, and the cardinal directions on their map. They were a pilot, not infantry, but they still remembered their basic training and that would have to do.

The rest of the supplies were: the blanket, a bottle of water, three ration bars, a fire starter, a large knife, a flare, a very small first aid kit, and a vial of water purification tablets. After half an hour with the knife, Puller had cut out a section of the parachute big enough to make a tent and turned the straps and the emergency kit into a backpack. Their sidearm and the knife were at least some weaponry, and after that, the only things they left behind were a mangled parachute and the lonely pilot’s seat. 

It took them almost an hour to climb down the plateau, which had been higher than it had looked from the top. On the way, the rising temperature forced them to stop and take off their clothes, tie their thermal undersuit to the backpack, put the outer flight suit back on, and tie the sleeves at their waist. They wore their undershirt to keep off the sun and avoid thinking about the stubble on their chest, and the helmet for the comm and visor. Then they continued on, finally reached the valley floor, and began to cross it.

As they were approaching a dry stream bed, their comm hissed. They hadn’t stopped cycling through frequencies, and it now it seemed like they’d finally found something. Revived, Puller jogged forward, chasing the signal. 

After another dozen meters or so, the static resolved into comprehensible sound. A voice.

Singing.

Puller slowed to a walk, confused but intrigued, and ecstatic to have found some sign of life. Was it someone playing a recording? Was someone, for some bizarre reason, singing on a comm? Was it an old transmission, automatically repeating, giving evidence of past life but only tormenting Puller in their solitude? 

Whichever it was, the singer’s voice was lovely, higher than a clone’s and clear, soft, strong. 

The song reminded Puller of a lilting Kaminoan ballad they’d heard one of the doctors singing even before they’d started basic training. This one was about the longing for home: how beautiful the coastline, how heady the wine, how delicious the food, how friendly the people. Puller had never been to a coastal town, but the music made them feel as if they had, and sorely missed it.

Then the song ended. There were two or three seconds of silence in which Puller desperately hoped there would be another, and then the same voice sighed and quietly muttered, “Pointless. No one’s listening anyway.”

Scrambling, Puller hit the transmit button on their helmet. “Not true. I’m listening and I’m not no one. I’m Puller. What’s your name?”

They were answered with a burst of staticky feedback. Maybe they’d startled the singer into dropping their comm? Oops.

“Sorry. Are you still there? My name is Puller,” they tried again. “I heard your song, it was beautiful.”

“Oh. Oh! Hello!” A pause. “Hello, Puller. My name is Mellyra.” 

“Mellyra,” Puller repeated, liking the way the name rolled off their tongue, “it’s very nice to meet you. I didn’t think anyone else was close enough to talk to.” 

“It’s nice to meet you too, Puller,” Mellyra said. Then, more shyly, “You liked my singing?”

“Yeah, you’ve got a great voice. But, Mellyra, are you alright? You must be pretty close, but I haven’t seen anything but canyons and dead ships out here. Unless you’re a local, but I thought nobody lived out here.” 

Mellyra was silent for a long time. Puller worried that they’d scared them away, cursing themself for being too direct, but then the comm came to life again. “No, I don’t live here,” Mellyra said. They had to be with the 876th, then, a tech or a subcontractor or a mid-level officer on some part of the _ Bastion _that Puller had never come into contact with. They certainly weren’t a droid, with a voice like that, and it didn’t make sense for the Separatists to plant a spy out here. “I’m in a canyon somewhere near the crashed star destroyer. I can’t climb out, but I have what I need to survive for at least three weeks.”

Puller’s urgency relaxed a little. “Glad to hear it. Don’t suppose you have any long-range comms?”

“No. I assume you don’t, either.”

“Nope. I’m planning to use the one on the destroyer. And I only have two days of water, tops, so I need to get there soon anyway. Once I do, I’ll come find you. There’s got to be an intact bike or shuttle on board, something I can use to search faster.”

“Don’t rush on my account,” Mellyra said, a thread of unease in their voice. “I’m not in danger, and who knows how long it will take to get to the comm?”

Puller shook their head, even though Mellyra couldn’t see. “What? ‘Course I’m coming to get you as soon as I can. Your situation could change fast, and I could use help crawling through a wreck that big.” 

There was a longish pause, during which Puller stopped at the rim of the first canyon and looked down. It wasn’t far to the bottom, maybe a little more than twice Puller’s height, and there were plenty of outcroppings on the rock to hold on to. It was definitely climbable. The question was, would it be better to climb down and then up the other side, keeping as straight a line towards the _ Bastion _as possible? Or was it one of the little canyons that had seemed to connect up with the bigger one that curved towards the wreck, and therefore easier to walk along the bottom? They got out their map to check.

“Thank you, Puller,” Mellyra finally said. “I hope you get to the wreck safely.” Another, much shorter pause. “I like your voice, too.”

Puller laughed off the sudden flare of warmth in their chest. “You’d change your mind if you heard me sing.”

“I don’t think I will.” Mellyra sounded awfully confident for someone who’d been talking to them for about five minutes. “Go ahead, try and prove me wrong.”

The hours in the pack hadn’t done the map any favors, or maybe Puller just hadn’t done a good job to begin with. Looking at it again, it wasn’t so much an accurate representation of the topography as a mess of squiggly lines. Puller wasn’t at all sure they’d even gotten the main features right. 

On top of that, they realized, being on the ground wasn’t like flying, safe one moment and blown to smithereens the next. Being on the ground exposed them to a whole range of moderate dangers, and if Puller got hurt, there was no one to help them. 

Risking instant death was one thing; risking death by infection or dehydration was another entirely. 

They decided to walk the rim looking for a safer place to climb down. “Fine, but you’ve got no one to blame but yourself when you hate it.” 

Mellyra scoffed at that, and Puller smiled. 

They thought of all the music they knew: the drinking songs they sang with their sibs in the mess, the popular recordings played in every part of the barracks, the marching cadences of basic training. They eventually picked a song, and after taking a deep breath and reminding themself that they wouldn’t die if Mellyra didn’t like it, started to sing.

It was a Rylothian folk song with an energetic melody, one that had spread through almost all the clone trooper battalions, popular for its catchyness, the way you could stomp or clap or march to the beat, and the silly story. It told the tale of one woman enlisting her family, then her neighbors, and eventually the entire village in a campaign to make the best and biggest meiloorun pie in the county.

By the time Puller had sung three verses, they were actually feeling a bit better about their situation. They took a breath to start in on the chorus for a third time and almost lost their note when Mellyra joined in.

When Puller sang low, Mellyra went an octave higher, and when Puller sang in the mid-range, Mellyra matched them. It was the first time they’d ever sung with someone whose voice wasn’t identical to their own, and it was as wonderful as it was strange. Like flying at a sib’s wingtip, their two voices mixed together, and it didn’t matter that they were singing ridiculous lyrics; for the first time, Puller was soaring without wings.

All too soon, the song came to an end, though Puller held the last note as long as they could. Then they gave the duet the moment of silence it deserved.

“We were both wrong,” Mellyra said after another moment. “I love your voice.” 

Puller laughed their tension away again, this time distinctly aware of heat rising to their face. “Oh, stars, really it’s nothing special,” they said, knowing just how true that was. “But singing with you was.”

“Yes!” Mellyra agreed enthusiastically. “Can we sing something else?”

Puller swallowed, realizing just how parched they’d become over the course of the song. They took a drink from their canteen, frowning at how little it carried. “Much as I’d like to, it would be a bad idea. The air on this planet is so dry, and I don’t have much water. Sorry, Mels.”

“Oh. Yes. I suppose that makes sense,” Mellyra said, the downturn in tone dragging Puller’s spirits with it. Then, slowly: “‘Mels’?”

“Yeah, a nickname. Those are big where I come from.” They winced. “Blast, do you not like it?”

“No!” Mellyra said quickly. “No, it’s fine. You can call me Mels.” 

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

Tension uncoiled from Puller’s shoulders. Well, the tension that had been nerves. There was still plenty of tension from carrying a shoddily-made pack for hours. “Great! Now, if it’s not going to cost you too much water, I’d love to hear more of your singing, Mels.”

“It won’t. What kind of song would you like to hear?”

Readjusting their pack, Puller smiled. “What’s your favorite?”

* * *

Mellyra sang the ten songs she liked best for Puller, with breaks in between to talk about the music, or to wait while he navigated a tricky bit of terrain. It was fascinating; talking to an organic was nothing like talking to the other VGSPBDs or even the command droids. She had to translate all her thoughts from digital processes into Basic, and then feed that datastream through the voice synthesis program, and then transmit it, and then wait for a response, and _ then _ do the whole thing _ again, _in reverse, to understand Puller. And yet, even with how inefficient it was, she was enjoying herself immensely. 

For one, it was the first time anyone had interacted with her as if she were a complete individual.

Was she? It wasn’t something she’d contemplated before. Having individuality hadn’t made her an individual before, not when she’d still been connected to the swarm, when they still thought and moved as one.

But she wasn’t connected anymore. She felt the absence like a missing component — no. Like _ she _was the missing component, an isolated part of a whole. 

If she hadn’t developed individuality, she was suddenly sure, a broken part separated from the machine would be exactly what she was.

So maybe Puller was right. Maybe she was a whole, self-contained person. It was a strange thought, but not a bad one. Maybe even a good one.

Equally strange and pleasant was that Puller seemed genuinely interested in their interactions. Even with limited data, she could tell that he was being friendly with her.

Were they friends? She’d never had a friend before. Once the thought had occurred to her, she found herself very hopeful that it was true. She liked Puller and wanted him to like her in return.

Another hour of intermittent singing, and Puller finally reached the wreck of the destroyer. It made sense for him to go there since he needed food and water, and the fact that it was a Republic war ship didn’t seem to bother him at all. But his proximity to it started up a threat-assessment protocol in Mellyra’s core; early in her existence, her associative matrix had classified Republic ships as threatening. 

“I don’t see any escape pods,” Puller said. “I hope that means everyone got out.” 

Mellyra searched through her files and came up with the fact that organics valued their own and each others’ existences sufficiently to build thousands of tiny vehicles that would carry them to safety in the event of the loss of a capital ship. It was a significant difference from commanders that would frequently order VGSPBDs to destroy themselves on enemy ships rather than refuel them.

Trying to ignore the negative feedback those thoughts had introduced into her processes, Mellyra focused on the problems at hand. “How does it look? Do you think there’s much still intact inside?”

“The fore is half-buried, and the mid decks are sort of crumpled, but the aft looks fine, at least from this side,” Puller responded. “The dorsal hangar doors are open, but it’s quite a drop from them to the deck, so I’m going to try to find an airlock or a hull breach that I won’t need rope for.”

Mellyra’s unfavorable predictions sped up. “There are so many things that could go wrong,” she said. “You could fall through a damaged piece of decking. What if there are fires or live electrical discharges inside? What about pockets of smoke or broken water tanks? What about survivors?”

“I’m looking for survivors first,” Puller said. “Assuming the bioscanners are still working. Even if they’re not, I’ll do a physical sweep once I get my own needs taken care of.”

“What if they don’t care that you came to help them?” Mellyra pointed out. “They could hurt you.”

“Why would they do that?” he dismissed. “I’ll be fine, Mels, don’t you worry. I just need to take my time.”

Mellyra didn’t agree at all, but chose to wait to discuss it more. She picked a new song to sing while Puller looked for a way in. It was five more songs — each more gloomy than the last — before Puller found an airlock within easy climbing distance.

“Yes! Alright, Mels, wish me luck. And, if I can put in a request, maybe give the sad songs a rest?”

Mellyra huffed. “Fine, He-Who-Climbs-Destroyers.”

Unlike she’d hoped, Puller didn’t laugh. There was a pause, and then he spoke, voice casual. 

Or rather, the main tones were within parameters for casual; the undertones were not. “‘They,’ actually.”

Cautiously, given Puller’s vocal shift, Mellyra asked, “‘They’?”

With the same buried tension in his voice, Puller said, “I’m not a ‘he,’ Mels. I’m a ‘they.’”

Mellyra thought. She didn’t fully understand why word choice mattered, but it clearly did. “Um, alright. I won’t call you ‘he’ again,” she said, already changing her indices. Then, reflecting that words were a medium of social interaction, decided to share the same information. “I’m a ‘she.’”

It had been the pronoun used for the character her voice had come from, and based on the game characters, she’d assumed that voice pitch and pronouns went roughly together. But there hadn’t been anyone called ‘they’ in the game, now that she was reviewing it. Had she been wrong, and it was some other parameter that dictated which words organics associated with themselves? Or was it more complicated than one game could reflect? And would it make her seem strange if she asked questions?

Most importantly, did Puller suspect she wasn’t organic because of her mistake? She hoped not. She knew a little about how organics treated droids, and it was nothing she wanted to experience. Especially not from Puller.

Puller inhaled, and Mellyra waited for them to denounce her as a droid, but they didn’t. “Climbing now. Gonna need quiet to concentrate.”

Mellyra waited, listening to Puller’s breathing get heavier. It seemed that they hadn’t connected her assumption to any revelations about her nature. Had it not been that big of a mistake, then? Or had it been the same kind of mistake an organic would make? She wasn’t sure.

“Okay, Mels, I’m in,” Puller said. There were some shifting noises, and then a click. “Emergency light’s still working. Stars, this place is downright spooky like this.”

“I’ll sing something cheerful, then,” Mellyra offered. Puller didn’t object, so she went ahead with another song.

When she finished, Puller said, “Thanks. That was a lot better with you singing.” 

“I’m glad.”

“It’s a real nice change from what I’m used to. My squadron have tried to sing while we do maintenance but Locke has a tin ear and he always mucks it up for the rest of us.”

Squadron? Puller was a soldier, then.

Mellyra knew there hadn’t been any organic soldiers working on or with the _ Sterkte. _And it was highly unlikely that the planet had any military to speak of.

Which meant that Puller was Republic.

A clamor of emotion flooded Mellyra’s systems from memory core to hydraulics, confusion and fear and rage and sadness. Half a dozen warnings screamed at her to address the deluge, and to function at all she had to pause all unessential subroutines. She’d have to untangle everything later, but in the moment, Puller was still talking, and Mellyra wasn’t willing to give up control of their perception of her.

“And even the week when Locke was in Medical, the rest of us kept trying to one-up each other in volume or tempo or both.”

In the absence of emotion, Mellyra was left with only her priority algorithms to work from. She couldn’t feel anything about it, but the ranked list of tasks ensured she was still working for what mattered.

One task was to figure out how humans used pronouns. She logged a note that voices _ did _have something to do with pronouns, if other clones were ‘he,’ though it wasn’t as straightforward as she’d originally assumed. If she were capable of feeling anything at the moment, she would have experienced frustration at the fact that she had incomplete information. It would be almost impossible to construct a set of rules without a proper dataset. 

After evaluating the variables of the current scenario, Mellyra concluded that asking questions, if they were circumspect, would not be overly likely to interfere with the higher-priority task of keeping secret the fact that she was a droid. 

“If you don’t mind me asking,” she said slowly, organic syntax and inflection more difficult with her processors in task mode, “what makes you a ‘they’ and not a ‘he’?”

A short pause. “I don’t know if I can explain it,” Puller said, contemplative. “‘He’ feels wrong. Too much throttle, not enough yoke.”

Mellyra waited, but they didn’t say anything else, and she decided that she’d successfully avoided Puller’s suspicion for the time being. However, she didn’t have definitions for everything they’d said. “What’s ‘yoke’?”

Puller chuckled. “Sorry, I forget not everyone knows ships. The yoke is how you steer.” 

Of course; organics couldn’t directly command synthetic hardware and needed interfaces to do so.

It gave her more information about Puller in particular, as well. “Are you a pilot?”

“Yeah,” they confirmed. “Pretty good one, if I do say so myself.”

Puller’s vocal tone — and therefore emotions — were changing, and without her own, Mellyra didn’t have adequate data to interact with any favorable probability of success. She needed a way to get out of the conversation.

While she was evaluating possible courses of action, there was a mechanical thunk over the comm. 

“Ha! I was right, the secondary generators in this sector still work! Now I have light and doors!”

“That’s great!” Mellyra said, because it was a better opening than she could have created. “Will you be okay without me for the time being? I have something I need to take care of.”

“I’ve kept you a while, haven’t I?” Puller said. “Go ahead, I’ll be fine. You can call me back as soon as you’re done.”

“Okay. Good luck,” Mellyra answered, and then closed the channel.

Since she’d assessed the canyon she was trapped in, Mellyra’s chassis had remained in the same position: standing on three struts, the damaged fourth held up and out of the way, body at an unusual angle due to the suboptimal weight distribution. She re-evaluated all hardware to make certain that nothing had changed and completed that hour’s tenth visual sweep of the canyon as well.

Then, once she’d confirmed there were no new threats, she considered the problem of her feelings.

It would be easier if she dealt with them one at a time — in fact, it was possible that she could crash if she attempted to simply reactivate them all at once. The safest option would be to isolate each process and resolve them sequentially. It would take time, but probably not as much as Puller needed to look for survivors and tend to their physical needs. She’d be done long before she had to interact emotionally again.

The first process she resumed was fear. It was so intense at first that she immediately powered up her laser cannons. After a few seconds, though, the lack of immediate threat enabled her to reassure herself: Puller couldn’t possibly find her without an active signal. Soon she was relatively calm again.

Next, Mellyra allowed her rage to resume. Every processor pulsed out cycles of commands to _ DESTROY DESTROY DESTROY _that activated not just her cannons but also her targeting systems and torpedo launchers, no matter her lack of flight capabilities, torpedoes, or targets. Not only was she designed to fight; in that moment she wanted to, because Puller had undoubtedly shot down any number of Mellyra’s fellows, maybe even helped take out whole swarms or control ships, and she hated them for it.

She hated them. Wanted to shoot them dead, to delete the agent that had deleted so many droids. Using an unknown Republic soldier she’d seen in a dropship as a stand-in for Puller, she made a simulation of what that would be like: her lasers burning through their fragile organic body, how they’d fall and never shoot anyone ever again.

At the end of the sim, Mellyra’s swarm was still dead, and she was still trapped in the canyon. Hate was pointless.

Powering her weapons down, Mellyra archived the memory of her rage and returned to the other emotions.

Confusion was next. For their presumed actions as a military pilot, Puller was her enemy. However, they’d answered Mellyra when she’d been completely alone, talked to her, sang with her, _ listened _to her. No one, not fellow, commander, or enemy, had ever done that before. Her music and games gave her the impression that that was how a friend behaved.

So what was Puller to her? Did she even have enough data to come to an accurate conclusion?

Thus far, unknown. But simply knowing what data she lacked was helpful; it gave her parameters for what information to seek, and the confusion faded into a much more manageable curiosity.

Then she could examine a completely new feeling. It was an awful negative feedback loop in her core, produced by and reproducing the idea that Puller had deceived her somehow, as if they’d given her a piece of music only for her to discover a virus embedded in the file.

Was it betrayal? Mellyra knew about it from the hologames. The characters didn’t always have proportional emotional responses, as far as Mellyra had been able to judge; but now she was beginning to understand.

Betrayal was broken trust. No one had ever betrayed Mellyra’s trust before.

No. That wasn’t entirely accurate. She had never been harmed by her swarm, that was true, but she’d also always been linked with them. Trust was a belief held without absolute certainty, and that meant it could only happen between distinct individuals. In the strictest sense, Mellyra hadn’t ever trusted anyone before because there had been no one to trust.

Had she trusted Puller? She hadn’t realized that was what had been happening. But the more she reviewed her memories of their conversations, the more it seemed that, yes, she had believed almost immediately that Puller meant her no harm.

Mellyra mourned her first trust, broken so quickly after she’d developed it. The grief was a paralyzing emotion, one that seemed to mag-lock her struts to the ground and her processes into pain and loss.

That grief set a pattern that other griefs slipped into: for her swarm, for the linking with other VGSPBDs she’d never experience again, for her flight capabilities.

Stars, she wished she could still fly. She would rather have been smashed to pieces in the battle above than languish there on the ground. If only she could feel herself cutting through space, carving spirals and arcs into the sky, just one last time.

Just once.

Unable or perhaps unwilling to resolve her sadness, Mellyra went into sleep mode. 

* * *

Puller had gotten a lot done on their first day on Aesaverr: crashed, discovered self alive, walked across klicks of difficult terrain, befriended someone stuck in an unknown canyon, reached the _ Bastion _, reactivated power in four of the intact sections, reached and operated the bioscanners, discovered that they were the only living being on board, and set up a base of sorts in a maintenance area near the airlock they’d used to get in. Their luck had held, and the aft mess hall had been both accessible and stocked. Puller had spent most of the afternoon organizing and preserving what was still edible, disposing of what wasn’t, and hauling what they needed through the ship to their new base. Given that everything was made more difficult by the angle of the floors, they felt pretty accomplished.

Weariness tugged them towards the deck, and they decided to worry about bedding and other niceties the next day. It had been the heat, they guessed, the heat and probably the hypoxia during the crash that had made them so much more fatigued than they otherwise would have been. No shame in human limitations.

Settling down to a meal of a ration bar and plenty of water, Puller made themself comfortable (or something like it) in a clear-ish corner, put on their helmet, and called Mellyra.

* * *

“Mels? You there?” Puller’s voice woke Mellyra. Her chrono marked several hours after she’d last spoken to them.

“Puller,” she answered, and though she tried, she couldn’t stop her voice from shaking. The grief was exactly where she’d left it before going to sleep. “Hello.” 

“You don’t sound so good, Mels, are you alright? Did something happen?”

Anger surged up in Mellyra. Puller didn’t even realize what they’d done to her! 

She felt fear, too, that whatever kindness they were expressing now was a deception.

But, more than either of those, she felt loneliness and sadness. And Puller sounded genuinely concerned.

“I can only hobble around,” she said, and once she’d started, the words just kept coming. “I can barely move and I’m trapped in this canyon and I’m never going to see my— everyone again, and I’m afraid and angry and confused.” Here her processes hiccuped, and her voice program translated it into a wordless, pained vocalization. And now Puller was going to either be overwhelmed with her mess of emotion, or find it tiresome, or—

“Hey, I’m here, Mels, I’m right here,” Puller said, voice soft. “I won’t leave you, I promise. I’m going to find you. I’ll help you get out of that canyon, and we’ll both get off this rock. I promise, Mellyra. We’re gonna be okay.”

“Okay,” Mellyra said, voice small. It should only have been more data, but the possibility that they might hurt her in the future made their kindness hurt.

And even so, Mellyra was still drawn to it. To Puller. Their voice seemed to link with her central core, override the processes generating her fear and anger, and regulate the pain and loss. She shouldn’t have even accepted their call, but she had allowed them to change her feelings again. A Republic soldier.

That wasn’t nearly as terrifying as it should have been.

Puller took a deep breath and started singing unprompted. The melody was gentle, their voice sweetly resonant. The words were from one person urging the listener to rest. That all was well.

Droids weren’t supposed to need rest, but maybe, after so many intense emotions, part of Mellyra did. Regardless, a sense of calm drifted slowly over her as Puller sang. Listening to their voice was like a particularly good defrag cycle, even though it was one of the shorter songs they’d shared with her and soon came to an end.

“That was beautiful,” Mellyra said, voice significantly more stable than before. “Though I’m not going to sleep.”

Puller chuckled. “Sorry. A lullaby was the most soothing song I could think of on short notice.”

“It was good.” And it supported the possibility that Puller truly was her friend. “Thank you.”

“Any time, Mels.”


	2. Chapter 2

After about six hours of fitful sleep and one of getting the nearest toilets to work, Puller called Mellyra. The two of them chatted while Puller ate breakfast (a prepackaged ration meal with the relative luxury of multiple food groups and almost three flavors) and looked for a route through a convoluted series of damaged corridors to the _Bastion_’s long-range comm station. 

“After I get the comm working, I’ll rig up a signal tracker, and then see what kinds of speeders are in the hangar,” they told her as they walked. “I’ll be able to come get you soon, Mels.” 

“Worry about the comm first,” she said with half a sigh in her throat. “You can’t stay here indefinitely.” 

“I know. And I will,” they assured her. “But even if I get through right away, I’m willing to make the 876th wait for you.” 

A pause. When she spoke, Mellyra sounded like she didn’t think Puller would like what she had to say. “Puller—” 

Just then, Puller reached the door to the comm station. 

“Oh, kriff me.” 

The whole room was smashed together like the insides of a trash compactor. None of the equipment could possibly have been operational; hells, Puller couldn’t even recognize most of it.

“Puller? What’s wrong?”

Puller tried to swallow the lump in their throat. “Station’s completely destroyed. There’s no way I can fix this.” 

They weren’t going to be able to call for help. Unless they got lucky with what was in the hangars, they were never going to see their sibs again. Never fight for the Republic again. Mellyra might be the last other sentient they’d ever meet.

_ Kriff. _

And all of that was true for Mels, too; she had it worse, actually, since Puller wasn’t a medic and couldn’t really treat whatever was wrong with her leg. “Kriff, Mels, I’m so sorry.” They’d never meant to lie to her, but without the comm, they could only keep part of their promise.

“Puller,” Mellyra said, her voice steady and clear. “It’s okay. It’ll take some time, but I think I can help you build another interface for the comm. After that, I can help you fix the comm itself.” 

Puller had never been good at not getting their hopes up, and this was no exception. “You’re good with tech then, eh?” Already they felt better. “Then I’ll find a scanner, bring you back here, and—”

“Didn’t you say you found a holocomm?” Mellyra interrupted. “With that, you can show me whatever you’re working on.” 

“You have one, too? Force, it would be good to see a friendly face.” 

That, and they’d been wondering what Mellyra looked like; what was her species? The shapes of her features? The prospect of seeing her didn’t recoup all the altitude they’d lost from the magnitude of the task ahead, but it came close. 

And then Puller’s spirits fell again like they’d flown into a pocket of cold air. “I’m sorry, Puller, but it’s partially broken. Audio is good both ways but I can only receive holo.” 

Did Mellyra not want them to see her for some reason? No, Puller admonished themself; Mels had given no sign of that. It was more likely that Puller wanted to see her so much that they were misinterpreting things.

Were they just lonely, or was it something else? They had no idea. It was the first time they’d ever been alone, and they’d never had a crush before. Neither experience was easy to come by as a clone. 

Trying to ignore their confusion, Puller said, “Well, that’s better than nothing, eh?”

Now that they’d found and documented the route from their base to the comm station, Puller estimated it would probably take about twenty minutes to get back. Not as bad as the hours it had taken to get there in the first place, but they still weren’t looking forward to doing it again.

Technically, they didn’t have to; they’d brought enough food and water to last two days. So, instead of heading back, they explored the areas near the comm station, keeping up conversation with Mellyra as they went. Somehow they got onto the topic of R3. 

“Oh, yeah, she’s great,” Puller said. “She’s saved my life more than once, and does amazing repair work under fire, not to mention the best nav software.” Then they chuckled at a memory. “Kind of a mouth on her, too. The whole squadron got a good laugh when she gave a lazy mechanic a dressing-down. My basic training sargeant would have been proud of those insults.” 

Mellyra giggled. Stars, that was cute.

Their conversation ranged further afield, but then Puller forgot everything they’d been saying when they found an intact barracks — a small one, probably for officers. 

“Bunks!” they cheered. “I’m going to go make sure there aren’t any problems in the ‘fresher, and then I’m taking a proper nap.” 

Mellyra chuckled. “I see where your priorities lie.” 

Having done it once already that morning, getting the water working only took about fifteen minutes. The shower was heaven, once Puller figured out how to do it without slipping down the floor (though the water pooling in the bottom corner wasn’t going to drain properly and that might become a problem later), and they even found a fresh razor. After they were clean and had a smooth chest and arms again, they felt much more like themself. 

Then, as they were getting ready to shave their face, they found a small pouch that someone had left behind. 

Curious, they looked inside and found cosmetics: a dark pencil for the eyes, three colors of lipstick, and powder. 

Puller had only seen a few people with makeup on, but they’d liked the effect. Quite a bit, if they were being honest. Enough that they’d wondered what they themself might look like with some on. But they’d never had access to cosmetics before, and even if they had, they wouldn’t have dared. 

No one was around to bother Puller about it now, though. They could try it with no one but themself to see.

But, stars; they were tired, they’d just gotten their face clean, and even in their solitude they couldn’t quite shake the feeling that they’d be doing something dangerous.

Promising themself they’d try some out later, they tucked the pouch into their pack and got to shaving. As they did, Puller wondered if Mellyra used makeup. If so, how she wore it. If she’d like the colors they’d found.

They wondered what she would think of Puller if they wore some. If, when they finally met in person, she would think they were strange or pretentious, like their sibs did. If she’d think that regardless of makeup.

The more they wondered, the more they worried.

“Bollocks.” It was looking more and more like a crush.

When their face was as smooth as the rest of them, they brushed and rebraided their hair. Then, clean, groomed and feeling better about at least that much, Puller went back out to the sleeping area. After choosing a bottom bunk near the middle of the room, they lay down with their feet downhill. They fell asleep hugging their pack, their head full of jumbled thoughts about faces and canyons and comm transmitters.

* * *

“Do you know where the ship’s schematics are?” Mellyra asked Puller on the morning of the third day after the crash.

“Engineering, maybe? Or the commander’s quarters?”

Mellyra made an exasperated noise. “Those are more likely than, say, the mess, but now we get to pick between opening up a lot of wall panels to find somewhere to patch in, or we try to do basically the same thing with holorecords.” 

“Wonderful,” Puller sighed. “I’d rather try the wall panels. We’d have to do at least one anyway even if we found the right schematics.” 

“Yes,” Mellyra said. “And depending on the records, there are probably fewer wall panels.” 

Puller groaned. “This is going to take so long.” 

“Maybe, maybe not,” Mellyra said, trying not to sound pleased at the possibility. 

“Okay,” Puller said with resolve. “How do I do this?”

She didn’t, technically, have any data on the functioning of Republic star destroyers. In fact, she didn’t have any data on fixing, diagnosing, or even observing the inner workings of ships that were not VGSPBDs. What she did have was a basic background knowledge of physics and a detailed directory of her own systems. There were only so many ways flight and communication could be achieved, and she estimated that she had seventy-nine percent of the data necessary to help Puller fix the long-range comm. 

For the other twenty-one percent, she’d have to fall back on making educated guesses and hoping they were good ones.

After Puller set up the holocomm to Mellyra’s satisfaction, she walked them through how to open a panel, check to see if the wiring was active, and patch into each operational system. It was time-consuming, but Puller was faster with each repetition, and soon they could talk about other things without making mistakes.

That was good, because it took them another six days to find an active relay for the long-range, and another day after that to collect all the parts and tools they needed to make an interface to patch in. By evening, Puller had a datapad sprouting a bundle of wires, the whole thing held together mostly with vent tape and optimism. 

A few seconds after plugging it in the first time and watching lines of code scroll by, Puller whistled. “There’s no chance I would have been able to do this on my own, even if I’d had instructions. You’re amazing, Mels.” 

“Oh! I, um,” Mellyra said, happiness interrupting a number of other processes. Luckily, before she had to come up with a better response, she saw the part of the program she needed scroll by. “There! Pause there.” 

Puller did. After another few minutes in the guts of the comm system, Mellyra stopped, surprised. “Not only does the reception work, it’s active,” she said. “All you need to do is route the signal through a device that can synthesize audio, and you can listen to all the transmissions in range.” 

“I guess something had to be easy.” Mellyra could hear the grin in Puller’s voice. “Show me how?”

She did, and then Puller was scanning through frequencies patched through to their helmet’s comm. Routed through the holocomm as she was, Mellyra couldn’t hear any of it.

“Nothing on this one,” Puller said, then, presumably changing frequencies, “Nothing here, either.” 

They tried four more. “Something on this one,” they said when they’d reached the sixth frequency. “It’s garbled, might be something from the nearest town? Maybe there’s a storm between here and there.” 

There was more nothing on the seventh through thirteenth channels. Then, Puller went silent. Through the holocomm, Mellyra could see their hands clench.

“Puller? Is something wrong?”

A pause. Puller swallowed. “I picked up a distress call. Automatic.” Their voice sounded very flat. It barely sounded like their voice at all, and warning messages flared in Mellyra’s core. What was wrong? What could she do?

“A ship?” she prompted.

“No,” Puller said. “A town. There weren’t supposed to be any towns out here.” 

Frantically, Mellyra searched her game files for anything that might help her figure out what was wrong with Puller. She barely understood why a simple change in vocal tone was worrying her so much, let alone the cause. 

Silence, she quickly discovered, was worse. She used a fraction of her computing cycles to ask a question. “Do they still need help?”

“I don’t know,” Puler said, and now their voice was strained. Mellyra wasn’t sure if that was an improvement. “It’s an automatic message, but someone could still be there, hurt.” They swallowed, and then, voice cracking, said, “I have to go check.” 

Mellyra’s processes stopped trying to analyze Puller’s voice in favor of worrying about them going off somewhere unknown. 

She needed more data. “Will you patch the signal through to me?”

They did. A panicked, organic voice came through the comm.

“—render! Stop the bombardment! We have no ground-to-air weapons!” In the background, Mellyra could hear a series of impacts. “Please! Our shields have almost failed! You’ll kill us all! We’re civilians!” Then, a much louder explosion, and silence. Then it began again. “This is Pierren Riallait, leader of the town of Cabbio, sending a message to the commander of the Republic star destroyer. We surrender! Stop the bombardment! We have no—”

Mellyra cut the connection. Of course Puller would want to know if Cabbio needed help. That was just who they were. 

She felt pride and affection, but most of all, worry, an acute repeated stab of it in her code. “Puller, this could be very dangerous for you.” 

Puller picked up the holocomm. “I have to go, Mels. I can’t just leave someone if they need help.” 

“Whatever actually happened, they believed that the Republic was firing on them,” Mellyra said, urgency rising. “If you go in there wearing Republic armor, they’ll likely shoot you.” An old part of her coding asserted that she didn’t need to worry about a clone. She shouldn’t care about someone meant to shoot her.

It was the same programming that knew herself only as VGSPBD-130-220483-0937.

Puller stood up. “I’m in a flight suit, not armor, but I see your point. I’ll find something else to wear.” 

“At least hide the insignia,” Mellyra pressed. 

“Yeah, I will. I’ll just have to hope my face won’t set them off.” 

Mellyra hoped so, too. “You’ll take precautions? Weapons?”

“‘Course. I don’t _ want _to get shot.” 

Some of Mellyra’s louder alerts quieted. “How are you going to find them?”

“Gonna look for a speeder bike,” they said. “Can you help me rig up a signal scanner?” 

It would take Puller longer without Mellyra’s help, which could delay their trip until the chance of survivors — and, thus, people to hurt Puller — were lower.

Of course, if the delay was too long, Puller might try searching without a scanner and could wind up wandering around canyons indefinitely. The environment was dangerous all on its own, and the quicker Puller could go and come back, the safer they’d be.

“Yes,” Mellyra sighed. 

“I’m coming for you as soon as I take care of this,” Puller said, “and I’d have come for you sooner if you’d said you needed help. You know that, right?”

“Yes,” she said again, somewhat more softly. “It’s alright, Puller. I’m okay. You don’t need to come for me right away.” 

“I know you keep saying that, I just…” Puller swallowed. “I just don’t want you to think you’re not important to me.” 

A number of Mellyra’s processes veered into a dizzy, swooping feeling, and it was all she could do to get out, “I don’t.”

All too soon, most of her processes were back to projecting what might happen to Puller on their rescue mission, and then to her deeply unpleasant emotional reactions to most of those scenarios. “Please be careful. I don’t want anything to happen to you.” 

“I will,” they promised. “I know you’re depending on me to get you out of here. I’ll keep you updated every step of the way.” 

“You haven’t picked up the distress call with your helmet alone,” Mellyra pointed out. “Unless the town is just out of range in the same direction as my canyon, we’ll lose contact.” 

Puller groaned. “Damn. And I guess I have no idea how long it will take me to get there. With the long-range, the town could be anywhere on this hemisphere.” 

Actually, it couldn’t. “What’s the range of the destroyer’s cannons?” she asked quietly.

A heavy pause. “In atmo, something like five hundred klicks?”

She made some calculations. “Giving a reasonable margin for where the _ Bastion _probably was when it fired compared to where it landed, plus extending the range for the time the plasma bolts were in vacuum, that’s a radius of roughly twelve hundred klicks,” she said. “If you find a fast enough speeder, it won’t take you much longer than a day or so.” 

“They canyons will make it longer, but it might be only a few days,” Puller said. They took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s do this.” 

Mellyra was already analyzing what she could do to increase Puller’s chances of coming back unscathed. It wasn’t nearly as extensive a list as she would have liked.

* * *

The next morning, Puller went to the Small Craft Hangar to look for a shuttle or bike. It, at least, hadn’t been crushed, but the only things left in their original places were those that had been bolted down. In the tangled heap against the fore bulkhead, Puller thought they saw a speeder bike that was at least in one piece.

“This may take a while,” Puller sighed. 

Mels was already looking at the scene through the holocomm. “Yes. Would you teach me another song? It will help the time go faster.” 

“Hmm.” Puller thought, picking their way across the deck.

After a few moments, they realized both that they would need a repulsorlift to extricate the bike, and that the only songs they knew and hadn’t taught to Mellyra yet were dirty drinking songs.

Puller briefly imagined her singing one of them. Heat rushed to their face and they tripped over a charging cable before they successfully stopped imagining it.

“You know, uh, it turns out I’ve already taught you all the ones I know,” they said, trying for a normal-ish voice.

Calm thoughts. They needed to think about something soothing, like doing a triple barrel roll under enemy fire.

“Okay,” Mellyra said, seemingly unaware of Puller’s crisis. “Can I teach you one, then?”

_ Thank the Force. _“Yeah,” they said, smiling in relief and happiness both. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

A few hours and a lot of hauling later, Puller had found a working hoversledge and had used it to move the speeder bike into a maintenance bay. Mels helped them run a diagnostic, and then they had about an hour to start on repairs before lunch. 

“I’ve been meaning to thank you,” Puller said after a lull in the conversation. “For not minding that I use ‘they.’”

“Why would I mind which words you use for yourself?” Mellyra sounded genuinely confused, and for that Puller’s heart melted. 

“Well…” they started. They let the repetitive task of unfastening bolts from the motivator occupy the forefront of their mind, letting their deeper thoughts have some breathing space.

It worked; after a while, they’d found words. “‘They’ feels so much better than ‘he,’ but, I dunno, what if I’m just being cocky? There are millions of clones. What makes me so special? That’s what Vibro said when I told my squadron.” Nobody else had seemed to take it as a personal attack, but it had still cut. “After everyone stopped laughing, that is. Even my best mate, Nimbly, thought it was weird.” 

Puller was struck, unexpectedly, with how much they missed everyone; Nimbly, One-Two, and Locke especially, but even that moon jockey Vibro, too. It was a tight pain in their chest, and they had to breathe through it before they could resume talking.

“But then, there are plenty of other humans who go by ‘they.’ I looked it up when I first heard about it. I guess it’s just not a clone thing.” They huffed in frustration. “So the word that feels right also makes me feel like I’m turning my back on my sibs, and on top of that I still hate that nobody can look at this face or hear this voice and think anything but ‘he.’” They removed the final bolt, and then they were removing the damaged motivator from the bike. “So, I appreciate that you’ve accepted it. Means a lot.” 

“The way you talk about your squadron, I don’t see how anyone could think you were trying to put yourself above others,” Mellyra said, offended. “Nobody who’s spent that much time around you has any excuse for that kind of misinterpretation.” 

Puller had to smile. “Don’t be too hard on them. We’ve all been pretty busy fighting a war.” 

Mellyra made a skeptical noise. “They have basic observational and reasoning skills, don’t they?”

Puller huffed a laugh. “That’s what I’m talking about. You’re especially thoughtful, and you don’t seem to have the same hang-ups.” Suddenly aware that they had a sappy smile on their face and (probably) horribly obvious affection in their voice, they cleared their throat. 

“Well, regardless of their reasons,” Mellyra said, her tone implying that she had strong opinions but was too polite to argue about it any longer, “they’re wrong. You’re not being cocky or silly.” 

Chest swelling with a flurry of unexpected emotion, Puller took a deep breath to steady themself. “Thanks, Mels.” 

“Of course!” she said, still affonted on their behalf.

As Puller started installing a working motivator, Mellyra was already singing a new song, this one in a language Puller didn’t know. That meant they were free to focus on her beautiful voice and the way it curled around them, making them feel lighter. 

Stars. They couldn’t be sure, not with nothing to compare it to besides the familial love they had for their sibs, but they thought they might be in love with Mellyra.

* * *

After their work on the comm interface and the speeder bike, Mellyra began to realize that she admired Puller for more than just their kindness. They were resourceful, clever, and versatile, too. 

When they successfully finished repairing the bike’s power converter, they closed it up and sighed in satisfaction. “Who’s got two thumbs and can follow directions?”

That was a puzzling question. “Many sentients?” Mellyra offered.

“It’s a joke,” Puller said, voice reading as embarrassed to Mellyra’s self-written algorithm. “I say it like I’m being cocky, but it’s really nothing special.” 

“Special or not, thumbs are useful,” Mellyra pointed out. “And there’s no one else here who could do this.” 

Puller took a breath. “Don’t you worry, Mels, I’ll be back from Cabbio and get you out of there before you know it.” They were determined, Mellyra could tell, but there were too many other emotions in their voice for her to identify them all in real time. 

She’d review the file more thoroughly later, and hopefully that would help. It was important to her, understanding Puller’s feelings.

* * *

Speeder bike fixed and signal scanner ready, Mels insisted that Puller wait until morning to leave for Cabbio, so they went to bed early. 

Too early, apparently, as they woke long before sunrise. They tried to go back to sleep for almost an hour, but without their sibs’ breathing all around them, they felt like a ghost in the bunk room.

Kriff it. If they had to put up with all the drawbacks of being alone, they might as well enjoy the upsides, too. 

They opened the locker they’d been using and dug around. Cosmetics pouch in hand, they went to the mirror. They weren’t sure if there was a special way they were supposed to apply the makeup. They’d just have to put it on and see.

To draw a dark line under their bottom eyelashes, they had to fight quite a lot of flinching. They blamed that fact for the line coming out wobbly and heavy. Trying to smooth it out only made it thicker. 

Maybe that was okay? It certainly made their eye look different: somehow bigger, or maybe just more attention-getting.

They did the other eye and completely failed to make it match the first. Then they discovered that soap wasn’t very good at getting it off.

Eyes dark, smudged, and red from rubbing, Puller tried not to feel defeated. “It took you thirty rounds in the flight sim before you could finish in one piece,” they reminded themself. “Hopefully this won’t take thirty times, but it seems a lot less complicated than a dogfight.” 

A thought occurred to them, and Puller went back out to the bunk room to look through the lockers. The stuff inside was all tossed around, but there were only eight compartments, and in the fifth one Puller found more cosmetics. They spent some time reading labels, and eventually brought a jar of something like bruise ointment (though it smelled much nicer) back into the ‘fresher. A few minutes later, they had a clean face.

Another wash, and they were ready to try again. Their lines were still a bit thicker than they’d seen anyone else wear (not that they’d seen a great number of people in makeup) but they matched, and Puller liked very much how striking their eyes looked. 

“Ha! And only on the second try!”

* * *

After Puller finished the scanner and went inside, Mellyra thought about what would happen the next day. Puller would be off on the rescue mission. Most likely, there would be no survivors, not after almost two weeks, and Puller would come back.

Puller would come back, and if the signal scanner hadn’t broken somehow and Mellyra didn’t power down entirely, they’d go directly to her. What would they do, once they found out she was a CIS droid? What would _ she _do?

There were a number of actions Puller could take. She didn’t know which were most likely, but she could at least narrow it down to a reasonable number. With nothing else to do overnight, Mellyra settled in to run simulations.

Scenario 1:

_ “I’ve got your signal, Mels. I’ll be there in ten minutes or less.” _

_ Mellyra waited. She couldn’t help but pace, limping and confined to the canyon though she was. She was afraid that Puller might react badly, but also eager to see them for the first time. _

_ She heard their speeder bike arrive, then cut off. Puller’s footsteps approaching. “Where are you, Mels?” Their voice came through the comms and over the rim of the canyon both. _

_ “Down here,” Mellyra called out on her rarely-used external speakers. They made her voice sound what it was: synthetic. _

_ A small human silhouette appeared at the canyon rim, she heard an exclamation of surprise and disgust, and then the figure was gone. The speeder bike started up again, and Mellyra was alone. _

_ “Puller?” She tried their frequency, but there was no answer. _

Mellyra stopped the sim, sorrow overtaking her, almost overwhelming. It was different from her grief for her swarm; separation from other selves was a deep wound, yes, but being abandoned by another individual was worse in at least one way: there had been no choice involved in her crash or the destruction of her fellows. That Puller might _ choose _ to leave twisted her code into loops of pain.

It was… well. It was good to know about that ahead of time. She let it settle, then kept trying.

Scenario 2.⍺:

_ She heard their speeder bike arrive, then cut off. Puller’s footsteps approaching. “Where are you, Mels?” Their voice came through the comms and over the rim of the canyon both. _

_ “Down here,” Mellyra called out on her rarely-used external speakers. They made her voice sound what it was: synthetic. _

_ A small human silhouette appeared at the canyon rim, she heard an exclamation of surprise and anger, and then came the unmistakable sound of a blaster rifle powering up. _

_ Mellyra tried to use the walls for cover, but Puller found an angle she couldn’t escape from. She was built to dodge, not take hits. Even a blaster rifle could destroy her with enough shots to critical systems. _

For the second time in her existence, Mellyra felt betrayal. But unlike the first, this time she was heavy with resignation: of course Puller would shoot her. They were made to be enemies.

Then came anger. Her manufacturers had never intended Mellyra to be an individual, yet she’d become one! She’d never been given a voice, yet she sang! There were so many ways she’d added to or changed her original programming; couldn’t Puller do the same? They weren’t even synthetic, bound to the directives of code the way Mellyra was!

Her anger opened up new possibilities. 

Scenario 2.⍺.i:

_ A small human silhouette appeared at the canyon rim and she heard an exclamation of surprise and anger. Puller reached for their rifle, but Mellyra had already prepared her cannons. She shot them before they could touch their own weapon. _

_ Their body disappeared over the rim of the canyon. _

A rash of alerts screamed, too late to prevent the onslaught of feelings: betrayal, anger, sorrow, grief, remorse. Before, when she’d discovered Puller’s allegiance to the Republic, she’d been able to pause her emotional processes to better handle them. This time, they were too strong, too fast, too numerous for her to do so. All she could do was feel them and wait until they subsided.

Almost fifteen minutes had passed by the time Mellyra could control her processes again. She paused her emotions, wrote a subroutine that would automatically cut off any feelings that exceeded a certain processing speed, eliminated the _ i _series from her speculation, and resumed the simulations where she’d left off.

Scenario 2.⍺.x: 

_ She heard their speeder bike arrive, then cut off. Puller’s footsteps approaching. “Where are you, Mels?” Their voice came through the comm and over the rim of the canyon both. _

_ “Down here,” Mellyra called out on her rarely-used external speakers. They made her voice sound what it was: synthetic. _

_ A small human silhouette appeared at the canyon rim and then jumped back with a cry of alarm. “Mels! Are you alright? Does that vulture know you’re there?” _

_ “I _ am _ the droid.” _

_ “What?” Puller’s voice came out strangled. “No! You’re not Mellyra, you lying clanker! Where’s Mellyra? What have you done to her?” _

_ “It’s me, Puller,” she insisted. “I’m Mellyra. I’m Mels.” _

_ “No!” Their raw shout echoed off the canyon walls, and then they appeared over the rim, rifle drawn. Mellyra tried to use the walls for cover, but Puller found an angle she couldn’t escape from. They disabled all her chassis control within three shots. _

_ “Mels?” Their voice was frantic over the comm, and it hurt, almost as much as the plasma burning through her hull and flight systems. “Mels, where are you? Are you alright? I didn’t know vultures could copy voices but it didn’t fool me, I’m going to find you—” _

_ Another shot struck, taking out her comm reception. _

_ The silence offered no reprieve, because the memory of Puller’s words still cycled through her circuits. _

_ Then, oblivion. _

Her subroutine kicked in even before the sim ended, pausing the pain and fear it had caused. 

Mellyra considered the emotions. The idea of Puller destroying her was always distressing, but doing it without even recognizing her was even worse. 

Initially, that didn’t make sense. Shouldn’t it be more upsetting when Puller wanted to hurt her? 

She tried to isolate the variables. She ran a simulation of a scenario in which Puller didn’t recognize her as a VGSPBD (2.⍺.y). She also tried one (3.z) in which a commander droid didn’t recognize her as a member of Swarm 220483. 

Neither incited anywhere near the same level of desolation that Scenario 2.⍺.x had.

Finally, she tried a simulation separating out the destruction from the recognition (2.b.x), and discovered she’d been right. Puller not recognizing her as Mellyra was agonizing. 

She had not anticipated that particular symptom of individuality.

She had no data on what, if anything, could prevent it, either, and that made her feel like she had while falling out of the sky, helpless to do anything but mitigate the worst of the damage. 

Socially, she might not even be able to do that. 

Perhaps it would be better if she powered down. Without an active signal, Mellyra estimated that Puller had only a six point two percent chance of finding her. They’d give up looking for her eventually, and they already knew enough to fix the long-range. They could call for help and go back to the Republic, and Mellyra would be spared the worst possible outcome.

For the next several hours, in between short bursts of processing her anguish, Mellyra considered hiding indefinitely.

* * *

After the makeup success, Puller packed for the journey, shoving food, water, a medkit, and a blaster rifle into a real backpack. They dug up someone’s dress uniform trousers and a clean undershirt, neither of which bore Republic insignia. Then, after one last check of the bike and scanner, they were ready to go.

They followed Cabbio’s signal across canyons and plateaus, sun warming their back. They kept up conversation with Mellyra, though she sounded more subdued than normal. Puller didn’t like being a source of worry for her, but the rescue mission would be over soon, and then they could finally make good on their promise to help her.

When Mellyra’s latest song began to fuzz into static, Puller slowed the bike. 

“I think I’m about to lose you, Mels,” they said. “If I don’t find the town in two days I’ll turn back. You take care of yourself, eh?”

“I always have,” she replied. “Don’t you dare fall down a canyon or get shot or blown up.”

Puller smiled. “I’ll do my best.” Then, before either of them could get morose, they sped back up. “Puller out.” 

Mellyra’s farewell disintegrated into static, and then, silence. 

Puller turned off the helmet comm, though they still needed the visor. They did their best to focus on driving, on memorizing their route, on making plans to help the townspeople, but it was startling how much they already missed Mellyra. They’d known it would be hard, being completely on their own again, but they’d thought it would take more time to feel it.

To keep themself company, Puller started singing. They practiced the songs Mels had taught them, wincing when they were off-key, frowning when they couldn’t remember the words. After four songs, they felt better.

By mid-afternoon there weren’t any more canyons, only plateaus and valleys and naturally-formed towers of stone.

Another hour, and the signal scanner indicated that they were approaching the source. Puller started looking more closely at the land, searching for topography that might hide a town.

They realized they’d been wrong about the landscape; soon they came to the edge of a canyon deep and wide enough for a river to run along the bottom hundreds of meters below. Puller stopped the bike just to stare for a few minutes. 

Then they followed the rim towards the signal. There were no roads, no fences, no cultivated land. There were, however, a large number of birds congregating around a dark patch of land up ahead.

When they arrived, they realized it was carbon scoring from laser cannon strikes. Whoever had fired on the area hadn’t been too careful about where they’d hit.

Puller parked and dismounted, leaving their helmet and its insignia on the seat. Carrying the pack and weapons, they approached the rim. 

The cloud of birds was even thicker in the canyon. The rim curved outwards, so they couldn’t see the top fifty or so meters of the wall, but the birds were thickest about thirty meters below them. Below the birds, scorched rock and debris spilled down the slope.

All the way at the bottom was a dam stretching across the river, blackened and broken by cannon fire. The wall and rim opposite Puller had taken numerous hits as well, just like the spot they were standing on. 

There had been a settlement. One with a controlled water and power source, probably. And now there was only destruction.

It would make sense, a small voice at the back of their head said, for the Republic to destroy the dam. Get rid of access to power and water all at once. Make the area that much less attractive to the Separatists. 

“Shit.” 

Shaking their head, Puller chided themself for standing around wondering about whys and hows while someone might need help. They needed to get down to Cabbio.

But how? Their bike could, with enough height and speed, jump narrow canyons, but nothing close to the size of this one. If they found a less than completely vertical slope, they could maybe skid down it safely, but there was little chance of making it back up.

The people who’d made the dam had to have made some way to get down, right? Maybe Puller could find it.

A long half hour with quadnocs, the signal scanner, and numerous sweeps back and forth along the canyon rim rewarded Puller with the entrance to the narrowest, steepest, most dangerous-looking set of stairs they’d ever seen. They were carved into a seam in the rock, barely wide enough for one, and without any hint of a handrail. 

Puller had never been afraid of heights, but if they weren’t careful, Mellyra would have no one to help her. 

Re-securing their pack, their boot straps, and their weapons, Puller started down, deliberately putting one foot in front of the other, testing each step before moving to the next. 

After the first few meters, the wall changed from granite to sandstone, weathered into waves and pits. One shadow, Puller noticed, looked deeper than the others around it. When they got close, it turned out to be a natural indentation that someone had carved a little deeper to make a hidden hand-hold. 

The examined the wall further along the path, and now that they knew what to look for, they could see more hand-holds at regular intervals. Puller felt a surge of gratitude to whichever villagers had made them and made the climb more easily than they’d anticipated. 

Even so, they didn’t drop their guard. 

The stairs, in the end, led to a large hollow in the canyon wall, a sort of half-cave sheltering the village that had been built there. Puller loved the idea of it, living on the ground but also in the air.

Maybe that was why the destruction hit them so hard. They felt it in their stomach, in their chest. Once they found solid footing, they had to stop and just breathe for a moment. 

Most of the buildings were destroyed, and even the few still standing at the very back of the hollow had holes or scorch marks. There had been fire, enough to blacken the entire ceiling of the hollow. From a broken pipe a filthy rivulet wended through the hollow until it oozed over the side and down. Light fixtures were dark, or gaping open, or flickering.

And everything smelled like char or rotting meat, because everywhere, there were bodies.

A lot of them were burned beyond Puller’s ability to recognize their species. The ones that weren’t had crowds of scavenger birds surrounding them, and Puller didn’t want to find out (or even think about) what condition they were in.

“Force be with them,” Puller said. Shuddered. “Force be with _ me _.” 

But they’d come with a purpose, and they were going to fulfill it.

They started walking again. “Hello? Is anyone here?” Their voice echoed strangely off the stone, and they had to space out their calls to make sure they could hear a response.

They searched the village, navigating the alleys, climbing over rubble, checking storage bins. They’d been afraid of having to touch bodies to check for signs of life, but everyone they found was so far gone there was no question. In the building farthest from the stairs to the canyon rim, they found the distress signal transmitter next to a power relay and deactivated both.

When they were finished, Puller sat on a clean stretch of ground near the edge of the hollow. They clenched their fists and took a shuddering breath around the knot in their chest. “This shouldn’t have happened.”

After they stopped shaking, they picked up a rock and chucked it out into the canyon, watched it arc downwards before they lost sight of it. “Stars, I wish I could talk to Mels. Or Nimbly. Or Formation, or Locke, or any of my sibs, really. Even though I dunno what they could say. Hells, I don’t know if all of them made it through the battle. Or who will make it through the next. Everyone I know could be gone by the time I get back.” They shook their head and stood up again. “No. I’m not gonna sit here and think about that. I’m gonna do something for Cabbio, and then I’m going to find Mellyra.” 

There was no way to give each person a proper burial, cremation or funeral, not with the time and resources Puller had. But they could at least do something.

An hour later, the sun just touching the horizon, Puller was standing on the upper rim of the canyon again, putting the final stone on a small tower of rocks as high as their chest. They’d used the blackened stones of the laser scar — to memorialize what happened, to make it easily visible against the untouched ground. They had no idea how often it rained there, or how hard, but the tower would stand at least for a little while.

Even if no one ever saw it, they were glad they’d done it.

“I’ve never given a eulogy, and I’ve only been to military funerals. I don’t know what you would have wanted,” they said, addressing the spirits of the villagers. They closed their eyes and took a breath. “I’m so sorry that this happened to you. I don’t know if Command meant for this to happen or if someone karked up, but either way you’re all dead and I’m sorry.” Puller eyes started to sting. “Go with the Force. I hope you found peace and your loved ones.”

They stood silently for another moment, then turned back to their bike. Before they put their helmet on, they scrubbed at their face, snorting when their hand came away with smudges of eyeliner. They must look a mess now.

The makeup made them think of Mellyra, and that made them think of the first song they’d heard her sing, the melancholy one about missing home. The words weren’t quite right, but the feelings were. 

As the sun sank below the rim of the great canyon, Puller stood by the memorial cairn and sang every verse they knew.

* * *

Puller was out of contact for just under thirty-two standard hours, one point six times the local day-night cycle. 

By all rights Mellyra shouldn’t have been worried; she’d run the likelihood of survivors at Cabbio, estimating that there was only a one in three thousand sixty-one chance of Puller encountering anyone alive, and a one in ten thousand eight hundred fourteen chance of their being attacked. 

Even so, she had to repeatedly stop herself from running simulations of their injury and death. Of her many new experiences, her processes getting stuck in irrational loops was one of her least favorite. 

Should she have been worried about that? Did other sentients have those kinds of thoughts and feelings about their friends? 

Her worries weren’t exactly practical. Even if Puller proved to be a true friend, accepting her for who and what she was (less than a four percent chance, though that prediction had a margin of error wide enough to make it nearly useless), there was nowhere for her. No going back to the fleet. Even if Puller somehow delivered her to a carrier ship, the fleet wouldn’t consider her worth the time and energy required to re-integrate her into a new swarm.

No, nothing Puller could do would help her return to the Fleet. So her worry was either typical of friendship, or there was something wrong with her. 

She mulled on this without progress for several hours, and then decided that if she was already anxious, she might as well continue her projections of their first real meeting. 

Fortunately, the alpha series (in which Puller destroyed her) didn’t have that many possible variations and had been completed during her first run of simulations. 

Trying to continue the beta series immediately stalled. Surviving the first few minutes of the encounter meant there were far more possibilities.

But that wasn’t even Mellyra’s biggest problem. She had only experienced social interaction with one other being. She had almost no data to even begin making a predictive model of what her and Puller’s choices might be, once they’d met in person.

There hadn’t been many other times when she’d felt this lost. 

Once, while her swarm had been flying against a Republic squadron, the enemy had set off an ion bomb, scattering Mellyra and her fellows. She'd been lucky, only catching the edge of the energy pulse, but for a terrifying eight seconds, her optical sensors had become miscalibrated. For an eternal eight seconds, she only registered the strongest light, blind to the stars. 

It was like that now, thinking about what might happen between her and Puller: there was a staggering number of possibilities she couldn’t see.

Maybe that analogy could help. What did her optics represent, in this situation, and what would count as a re-start?

The games, she realized. Mellyra’s hologames presented the player with a series of choices, in actions and dialog, to make each playthrough unique. Before she’d examined the possibilities as merely variations that gave the games texture, but perhaps she could use them like simulations. 

She scrolled through the scripts, looking for a scenario that might be similar to hers. 

In an action game she found a turning point in which the player character revealed that they had secretly been a member of an enemy faction all along; the friend who heard this was shocked. The player could choose: placate the friend or ignore their emotional turmoil? Explain in terms the friend understood, or demand compliance? Let the friend leave, or (and Mellyra skimmed over this part) kill them to keep the secret? 

In the scenarios where the friend left, they also came back, and then there were more choices: convince them to join the player’s side, or tell them the truth? 

There were several different ways the player could end up with an intact friendship, but all of them required either manipulating the friend to change their allegiances, or the player renouncing their original side to stay with their friend. 

If the game was at all accurate or useful to Mellyra, did that mean the only way she and Puller could remain friends was for one or both of them to renounce their original loyalty? Would her realistic assessment of complete abandonment by the CIS navy count as a renunciation on her part? Was there even the slightest possibility Puller would renounce the Republic? 

There was no way to know. Mellyra moved on to another game.

This time, it was an interpersonal relationship simulation game. One of the game’s potential love interest characters had a family who disapproved of the player character. Friends encouraged the player to ignore this and openly engage in a relationship, but if the player did so, the family discovered the lovers, causing the love interest to break off all contact with the player character. It was only by respecting the love interest’s wishes for discretion that a relationship could progress.

That, at least, seemed fairly straightforward. Additionally, she’d already been doing her best to avoid behavior that upset Puller. It made her feel hopeful.

There was an espionage game that had no way to preserve the connection between characters on opposite sides. In that one, the best possible outcome was survival. Mellyra decided that since neither she nor Puller were spies (with eighty-eight percent certainty; disclosing the kind of information Puller had shared with her would be uncharacteristic of a spy), she shouldn’t consider that game as a good model.

An adventure game had the player character discover a shocking secret about themself in front of their equally shocked companions. Everyone renounce the player character’s past and continued on together. It was another suggestion that renunciation was important, with an emphasis on the present mattering more than the past. 

A second action game involved a companion revealing a secret. It was frustrating because all the choices presented to the player were collections of various feelings, intentions, and actions, all tangled together badly enough that there was no way Mellyra could isolate the variables.

Still, it made her wonder: was that how organics experienced emotions? Could they not separate one emotion from another, or their actions from their emotions? It would explain a lot. 

She was glad for that scenario, if only to get an idea of what Puller might experience when they met. 

Data acquired, Mellyra settled down in the center of her canyon and went through the games again, looking for deeper patterns, thinking about Puller, and processing her emotions. 

Almost thirty hours after Puller’s last transmission, they commed Mellyra again. “Mellyra, do you read?”

Relief to hear their voice cascaded through her. They were alive. 

Then her fear processes started up again, and she considered that if she was going to avoid Puller, she had to shut down immediately.

Or did she? If she told Puller now, before they found her, that would at least mean they’d have to make more of an effort to destroy her. Maybe they’d even have time to think about it and change their mind.

She closed her game files and archived what she’d learned. “Puller! Are you okay?”

“Yep, all good,” they said. “How are things with you, Mels?”

“I’m alright,” she said, voice betraying her worry.

Puller, of course, picked up on it. “Is something wrong?”

“I’m afraid,” she admitted. That was good; that was a step. She just needed to keep taking them.

“Of what?” 

She hesitated. Puller waited. The alpha series of simulations started replaying unbidden.

She stopped them. “I'm afraid you won’t like me anymore once you meet me,” she got out. It was at least true, if an understatement.

“Oh, Mels,” they said, voice soft, and Mellyra couldn’t decide whether she wanted to listen to their voice forever or make sure they never saw her. “Of course I’ll still like you.”

They weren’t getting it. She tried to feed a literal explanation through her voice program, but self-protection subroutines kept aborting her attempts. The most direct statement she could process was, “Even if I’m not what you expected?”

“I just expect you to be you, Mels,” they said, sounding completely sincere. “You don’t have to be anything else.” 

She wanted Puller to be right. She wanted it more than she wanted to fly again. 

And they _ still _ didn’t understand, and she _ still _couldn’t make herself say it. She almost shot the walls of the canyon in her frustration.

“Did you find Cabbio?” she asked, wanting to stop agonizing over her failure to communicate.

“I did,” Puller said, voice hardening in a way Mellyra had never heard before. “No survivors.” 

“I’m sorry,” Mellyra said, trying to be soothing. “Do you want to talk about it?”

They did. Mellyra listened, and offered comfort, and hoped that Puller would listen to her when she needed them to.

* * *

Puller followed Mellyra’s signal southeast across the desert. In late afternoon, the shadows of rock formations lengthening across the valley, they caught sight of a long gouge in the landscape. It looked exactly like the kind of mark Puller would expect a ship skidding across the plateau to leave. Mellyra had never told them the details of her crash, but between her stock of supplies and the size of the scrape, it had to be either a small shuttle or a large escape pod.

As they got closer, they could see the overall shape and size of the canyon: the main body short and wide, with a tail bending to the east to make a shape like the body and tail of a chubby loth-kitten. 

There weren’t many shuttles small enough to have been completely swallowed by that canyon; fewer still that the Republic used on a regular basis. No, most likely she’d been in an escape pod.

They arrived, parked the speeder bike a safe distance from the rim, and finished the approach on foot. 

And, as soon as they could see down into the canyon, they gasped and threw themself to the ground. There was a mostly-intact vulture droid down there, limping in slow circles and optically scanning the area.

Had it seen them? Puller waited, heart pounding, but no shots came. Maybe it didn’t have enough energy for its cannons?

In the lack of immediate danger, Puller double-checked the signal scanner, but they’d been right the first time; Mellyra’s signal was coming from the same canyon.

“I thought you said you were safe, Mels!” they hissed into the comm. “Does that clanker know you’re there?”

“I’m alright, Puller, and I promise you’re not in any danger. Please come closer.” 

Puller’s mind cast about frantically for a way to make sense of that. “How do you expect me to do that? Is there a hidden path?”

“You should be able to climb the northwest end of the canyon safely,” Mellyra said. “Will you try?”

That cut through Puller’s misgivings. “Of course, Mels. I’m not gonna leave you. It’ll take more than one broken clanker to keep me away.” 

She didn’t reply to that, but Puller was already backtracking to the speeder bike and then taking it around to the west-by-northwest rim. Mels had been right; there was a safely climbable way down the relatively sheltered canyon’s tail.

Puller parked again, made sure their rifle was in easy reach on its strap, and started down.

The first half of the climb was exactly what it had looked like from above, but then the path wound around the slope, out from the refuge of the tail and into the central part of the canyon. Puller stopped. If they kept going, they’d be completely exposed to the vulture.

Mellyra was good with tech stuff; maybe the droid couldn’t hurt anyone and she knew it. Maybe she'd even done something to take control of it.

Really, it came down to the fact that she’d said it was safe. She hadn’t let Puller down yet.

Swallowing, Puller rotated the rifle to hang in front of them, and started climbing again. Their pulse pounded in their ears as they rounded the bend and saw the vulture droid from far closer than they’d ever wanted to. 

It was small, as ships went, but huge compared to Puller, its body nearly four meters off the ground, the ends of its struts another two meters higher than that. Halfway down the canyon wall, Puller was only slightly above the thing’s head, and the space was tight enough that the droid was maybe only ten meters away. 

It was already facing their direction, and the long slits of its optical sensors seemed to be looking directly at Puller. They stared back at it for a long moment before continuing their descent, stomach clenching when its alien gaze did, in fact, follow them down.

“Mels,” they said, voice tight, trying not to sound as terrified as they were. It was hard, especially when they couldn’t see Mellyra or even her escape pod. “Where are you?” 

“I’m right in front of you, Puller,” she insisted, and her voice sounded strange. Not just unhappy, but doubled, somehow. Hell of a time for the comm to start malfunctioning.

“Where?” Puller hissed, eyes darting frantically around the canyon. “Mels, I don’t see you anywhere. Where are you hiding?”

“I’m not hiding, Puller,” she pleaded, voice still multiplied. “I’m right here.” 

On the last word, the vulture droid took a limping step forward, head dipping down, and Puller realized why Mellyra’s voice sounded distorted. They were hearing her in the comm, sure, but that wasn’t the only source of her voice.

It was also coming from the vulture.

Puller instinctively jerked back, lost their footing, and began to fall. They scrabbled at the canyon wall, trying to catch themself, but every rock they grabbed came away in their hands. Despair overtook their panic: they were going to fall, probably break a number of bones, and die slowly at the bottom of a hole with a vulture droid that had somehow stolen Mellyra’s voice.

And then they didn’t. There was suddenly something solid against their side, under their left arm, that they grabbed reflexively. Fall arrested, they could see that the thing holding them up was gray, smooth, and curved like a blade of grass. Puller’s eyes followed it down.

It was the vulture. Balanced awkwardly on its rear struts, the droid had lunged forward and jammed the left fore under Puller, its claw digging into the canyon wall behind them. It had saved Puller. 

Which was impossible. No clanker would ever help a clone.

Unless.

Unless, perhaps, they were already friends.

_ “Even if I’m not what you expected?” _

Mellyra, Puller realized belatedly, hadn't actually done anything to indicate she was organic. She'd never talked about food or water, just 'what she needed.' Never said what exactly was wrong with her leg. Hells, she hadn't even said she _had_ legs, had she. Just that she couldn't move very well, and because of her voice, Puller had made assumptions. 

She’d kept deflecting Puller from coming to find her. 

She’d been more interested in R3 than most people were. Hadn't teased them for being overly sentimental over a droid.

She hadn’t been surprised to learn that the Republic had bombed civilians. 

The ‘broken’ holocomm.

And she was, after all, stranded on a battlefield.

“Mels,” they whispered hoarsely. “That’s— that’s _ you_? This whole time, I’ve been talking to a droid fighter?!”

“It’s me, Puller,” she said, head turning down and to the side. “I’m sorry to surprise you like this. By the time I wanted to tell you, I didn’t know how.”

“You should be sorry,” Puller retorted, and then immediately felt guilty. Then angry at the guilt, then just confused. What were they supposed to feel about their favorite person turning out to be a clanker? Hells, what were they supposed to _ do_?

Their sibs would have blown Mellyra to pieces on sight, no question. Wasn’t that what they’d all be trained for, bred for? To destroy the enemy? _ ‘To protect the Republic from Separatist killing machines.’ _

But after Puller and Mellyra had sung to each other? After days and days and days with no one else for company? How could they possibly bring themself to do their duty?

“Puller. I know we were made to fight each other,” Mellyra said, as if she knew what they were thinking. “But realistically, I’m never going back to the CIS fleet, and I’m not going to fight you. Talking to you and singing with you have been so wonderful.” A pause, and there was an electronic hitch in her simulated breath. “I know you’re loyal to the Republic. I know you want to go back to your fleet, and you actually have a chance. I want that for you. Just...” Her voice broke into two tones and took on static. “Just, if you decide to destroy me, please don’t say any more harsh words. Your kindness has meant so much to me.”

Puller flinched. She’d predicted that there was a chance they’d kill her. 

The terrible thing was, she’d been right to: a deep part of Puller was still insisting they do it. But instead of shooting Puller first, or letting them fall, or even just shutting off her signal to hide, she’d let Puller come to her. Instead of pleading for her life, she asked only that they stop speaking unkindly.

Two weeks prior, Puller would have killed her right away. They’d have been glad to eliminate a threat, just like they were— had been? — satisfied with all their dogfight kills.

Two days prior, they wouldn’t have wanted to kill Mellyra, and they’d have come up with all the rational reasons not to: help with repairs, the possibility of using her for infiltration, that kind of thing. They would have hoped for something or someone else to make the decision for them, but they would still have felt obligated to destroy her.

But not a full day ago, Puller had held a funeral for victims of Republic duty, and they’d rather live out their days alone on Aesaverr than do it again. 

They’d rather space themself than pull the trigger.

Chest a painful mess of emotion, Puller’s hands tightened on Mellyra’s strut. Their voice broke as they said, “I’m not gonna kill you, Mels.” 

She lifted her head a little, posture rising hopefully.

Puller reached up and took off their helmet. “I’m not gonna kill you,” they repeated, more strongly this time, “and I’m not leaving yet, either. I’m gonna stay here and fix you up, if you want.” 

They’d promised. It made no difference that her broken leg was carboplast and not, as they’d assumed, flesh and bone.

“Really? That’s wonderful!” It was strange to see a vulture droid perk up in happiness, but the body language fit Mellyra so well that Puller found themself smiling. It really was her.

“Oh,” Mellyra said, delight, surprise and fascination all evident in her synthetic voice, “I like your face.” 

Puller hadn’t seen themself in a mirror, washed, or shaved in days, and their eyeliner was no doubt smudged to all hells. They had no idea why Mellyra would find their face at all likable. 

Still, hearing her say so loosened something in their chest.

“Yeah?” Puller leaned against Mels and laid their palm against her strut. Then, finding it was strangely true, added, “I like yours, too.”


	3. Chapter 3

For almost two weeks, Puller and Mellyra lived in a cycle of scavenging, discussion, and repair. Sometimes it would take days for Puller to scour the battlefield for a specific intact part (though they always noted the locations of any whole pieces they found, which saved time later), and sometimes they’d find what she needed within an hour. Sometimes it was the work of a few minutes to replace a broken part; sometimes Puller needed hours.

Forty-three percent of the time, Puller returned to the _ Bastion _in the early evening to eat, perform hygiene, take an hour or two for repairs on systems there, and sleep. They and Mellyra stayed on the comm for most of that, too, though of course Mellyra was quiet while Puller slept.

The other nights (she was working on a predictive model to figure out the pattern), Puller stayed in the canyon with Mellyra. They'd set out a firebox for heat and light, and Mellyra would sing while Puller ate. Then the two of them would sing together, or argue good-naturedly, or just talk. Mellyra told them what it was like to fly under her own power, and Puller explained how their ships felt something like armor and something like a friend. Mellyra answered Puller's questions about how she'd chosen her name, her voice; about what it was like to be a VGSPBD. Puller answered hers about clone life. 

Once it was dark enough, they’d look at the stars together. Then, after an hour or two of more conversation, Puller would roll themself into a portable textile cocoon and sleep.

While they were unconscious, it shouldn’t have mattered whether Mellyra had visuals of them or not, but the rise and fall of Puller’s chest kept her company in a way that knowing they were safe on the _ Bastion _did not. 

Though the animal life on the planet tended to be small and timid, Mellyra stood watch. It didn't matter that she hadn’t been built to feel protective of anyone; Puller was so much smaller than she was, and so comparatively soft and delicate, that she couldn’t help it. She hated how easy it would be for them to get hurt.

The more time she spent with Puller, the more they did for her, and the simple fact that they’d chosen to help her — 

Well. Mellyra still missed her swarm, badly, and expected that she always would; flying with them was a joy that lived deep in her central drive, an integral part of who she was. 

But Puller was kind, and skilled, and somehow perfectly compatible with traits she’d developed before they’d even met. Being with them made her happy in ways she hadn’t realized were possible, ways just as deep and essential as the joy of her swarm.

Watching them sleep, she made protecting them in every possible way her highest priority directive. 

Soon, she learned that unpleasant emotions were on that list. One day Puller was replacing the fuses in Mellyra’s damaged stabilizer when their hand slipped and cracked the fuse against her hull plating.

“Karking hell!” Puller threw the broken fuse on the ground and pushed themself upright to stalk away from Mellyra. She couldn’t see their face, but their posture radiated barely-restrained emotion. “I’m so sorry, Mels.”

“You’ll find another,” she assured them. “We have plenty of time.”

Puller’s hands rolled into fists. “What if we don’t?” They finally turned to look back at her, and Mellyra was surprised to see fear was their most prominent emotion. “The Republic’s going to want to salvage as much as they can. They’ll be back sooner or later, and if they find you… I’ll try, I swear to you I’ll do my damndest, but if they really want to,” and their voice broke, “I don’t think I’ll be able to keep them from killing you.” 

Puller was afraid for her, Mellyra realized. No one had done that before.

She wanted to reassure Puller, but they were right. Neither of them had anywhere near enough data to predict if or when the Republic was coming back, and she was under no illusions that one clone would be able to protect a CIS droid from it. 

However, one thing that happened relatively frequently in hologames was lying to make someone feel better. She’d never understood how false data could ever be favorable, but she considered it now.

If she convinced Puller everything was fine, they would experience some relief for an undetermined length of time. At the end of that period, either both of them would be able to leave before the Republic returned, or they wouldn’t. If they did, Mellyra could predict no negative consequences for Puller or herself. If they didn’t, Mellyra would be destroyed, and Puller would be upset by her demise.

By her deception, too. The games were all in agreement that people didn’t like being lied to, and that it damaged relationships.

Well, if she was destroyed, there would be no relationship at all.

Next question: would the benefits of calming Puller now be rendered useless by their potential negative emotions if they discovered the lie? 

After thinking about it with eighty-five percent of her processing power, she couldn’t refine any predictions to a low margin of error. Inconclusive.

For the moment, the distress evident in Puller’s hands and face was perpetuating negative feedback in Mellyra’s processors, and she still didn’t have any actionable data. So, in the absence of conclusive predictions, she decided to follow her emotional directives.

“Most salvage operations happen either within three days, or after four months,” she said, careful to isolate her worry from her voice program.

“Yeah?” Puller said, relaxing somewhat. “Force, I hope so.” They took a step closer, then stopped, and backed off again. Ever since she’d told them she couldn’t see well up close, they’d kept their distance when they could. “I think I’ve got another set of fuses up there. Gonna go check.”

Mellyra watched them climb the ladder they’d dug out of the hangar of the _ Bastion, _hoping she hadn’t inadvertently set Puller up to be hurt by her lie; hoping that it helped. “No rush.” 

* * *

Perhaps the most startling thing, once Puller had gotten over the shock of their first meeting, was that they didn't actually have a problem with Mels being a Separatist droid. She was just as interesting, smart, cheerful, and fun as she'd always been, and Puller enjoyed the time they spent together just as much, too. 

For a few days, that was all, and Puller thought maybe the crush was gone. If they were being honest, it was a relief; having a crush had been fun, but also stressful and inconvenient. Puller wasn't overly sorry to be without romantic feelings, especially for someone whose very existence was antithetical to clone values.

But then, nine days after they'd found her, they were sitting on the aft of Mels’s fuselage, leaned sideways against her head to recalibrate her atmospheric sensor array.

“Oh, that’s much better,” Mellyra said in profound relief. “Thank you.” 

She sighed, too, and hummed in satisfaction, and hearing that while their body was pressed against hers sent a flash of heat through Puller’s chest and abdomen. Heart racing, they closed up the access panel and retreated a safe distance from Mels as quickly as they could. 

Apparently, Mellyra's nature hadn't changed Puller's feelings for her at all. 

Instead, it provoked a mess of emotions about them. At first they felt guilty for feeling romantically about an enemy, but focusing on how she'd more or less defected helped lay that feeling to rest. More difficult was how they often felt like something must be wrong with them for feeling that way about a droid. They'd never heard of any other organics doing that, much less humans. Much less clones, whose anti-droid sentiment ran deep enough to seem more like a part of their genetic makeup than their culture.

But when Puller forgot who they were before the crash, loving Mellyra didn’t feel wrong. It didn't even feel odd. It felt natural. Good.

Because of this inner conflict, they didn't tell Mels right off. As more days passed, and they could hold on to the positive feelings longer and longer, they gave the idea of confession some thought.

The first few times, it was scary enough that they couldn't get past the basic idea and into specifics. But after a while, they thought about the different possibilities. The underlying factors.

They shouldn't tell her, they realized. Not while Mellyra depended on them. If they did, how could they be sure she wouldn't say she reciprocated just to please the one who held her fate in their hands? Keeping quiet was the right thing to do. That it also let them avoid something that scared the piss out of them was just a bonus. 

So, with relatively little change in their friendship, the two of them continued to keep company during most waking moments. Puller worked on Mellyra’s repairs, tended to their own needs, and, when they slept on the _ Bastion, _added the eye pencil to their morning hygiene routine. Their lines were growing less and less clumsy, and they felt more and more confident in their appearance. Before long, they even stopped worrying what their sibs would think.

* * *

Four weeks after the crash, Mellyra’s repulsors were ready to attempt lifting her out of the canyon. Though she still didn’t have propulsion, as long as she could hover high enough, Puller could tow her over solid ground. Repairs would go even faster with more space to work, and Puller wouldn’t have to keep lowering everything into the canyon. 

Puller checked to make sure the tether they’d woven out of cargo straps held fast around Mellyra’s body, and then they climbed out of the canyon. They hauled the loose end of the tether up with a rope, tied it to the sledge, and gave her a thumbs-up from the rim. 

Mellyra powered up. Making herself wait long enough to warm up properly was more difficult than she would have imagined, each second seeming to drag as her processors churned out projections and scenarios and anticipation. But, eventually, she was ready, and she activated her repulsorlift. With a hum, she rose off the ground, hovering a few meters above the canyon floor.

“Yes!” Puller shouted. “Alright, Mels, you can do this! Just a little more juice and you’ll be out!”

Very glad that VGSPBD fuel cells had been one of the things Puller had collected, Mellyra increased power and rose another meter. Two meters. Three. Soon she could see over the canyon rim, and after adding more power, cleared it entirely.

Puller drove the hoversledge forward and the tether pulled taut. Soon Mellyra was over solid ground again, and she lowered her power output.

“I’m out!” she said, delighted. “I’m out of the canyon!”

Puller turned back to grin at her. “Looking good, Mels!”

Being towed was slower than any flying she'd done, but she was still moving through the air, and that was the second greatest relief she’d ever felt. It was getting a small piece of herself back. Soon, Mellyra would be flying by her own power again.

When she did, she wanted to fly with Puller. The idea and desire hit at the same time, overwhelming her to the point that she forgot to use her stabilizers for an alarmingly wobbly moment.

“Mels, you okay? Did something break?” Puller slowed the sledge, looking up in concern.

“No, I’m okay,” Mellyra said, embarrassment buzzing under her hull. “I just got distracted.” 

“Do you want to take a break?”

“No, I’m fine, Puller, thank you.” 

Puller paused, like they might say something else, but turned back to the sledge controls instead. “Okay, I’ll start back up again if you’re ready.” 

“Go ahead.” 

Puller picked up again, and Mellyra wrote a quick subroutine to make sure she didn’t drop her stabilizers again. Then she could think.

She wanted to fly with Puller. And, unlike her desire to be able to fly again or her wish that her swarm hadn’t been destroyed, it wasn’t a want born of grief or injury.

It was like what had driven her to download games and music in the first place, she realized. Just as she had developed a desire to experience art and culture and socialization when she’d become an individual, having a friend had given her a desire to share experiences with them.

Or, at least, that’s what she thought had happened. She couldn’t really be sure, not when she didn’t fully understand her individuality.

The desire itself was straightforward. She simulated Puller piloting a Republic ship, both of them taking off from the dusty ground, the canyons falling away beneath them as they climbed, banked, dove. Puller’s voice loud and joyful in her comm, a wide open sky around them, and no orders. 

She wondered if Puller would want that, too. She thought it likely; they loved flying, and they seemed to enjoy her company. Maybe, once she could fly again, they’d go with her before they went back to the Republic. 

Almost as quickly as Mellyra’s spirits had soared to be free of the canyon, they sank. Puller was going to leave. Of course they’d help her, and maybe even get her back to CIS territory, somewhere with the right kind of fuel and fewer people shooting at her. But Puller wanted to go back to their siblings. They’d said so from the very beginning, and she could hear the longing in their voice when they talked about their squadron. 

She thought about how much Puller had done for her. She thought about their smile, bright and infectious; their hands, deft and complexly beautiful; their voice, warm and rich and sweet. She thought about how they’d never even considered not going to Cabbio. How they made her laugh.

She thought about how, as much as ‘Mellyra’ encompassed her individuality, ‘Mels’ named the subset of her that had a friend. The most joyous part.

She wrote a new directive: _ help Puller achieve their goals. _She gave it third-highest priority, just under her own safety.

Fourth-highest was flying with Puller. At least once.

One flight.

One flight, and then she’d be able to say goodbye.

* * *

Within another day, Puller had relocated all of the parts and tools for Mellyra’s repairs to a nice flat space just outside the _ Bastion _. It was so much easier to have her that close. 

The next step, after having fixed her stabilizers and repulsors, was to address her broken strut. The two of them inventoried the available materials and discussed it while Puller ate lunch, and decided that they would replace the entire strut with an undamaged one.

Puller had never done repairs at such a large scale before. After maneuvering the hoversledge to take the weight of the damaged strut, they hesitated.

“Is something wrong, Puller?”

Puller shook themself. “Just nervous.” 

“The strut is already broken,” she said, and maybe they shouldn’t have been surprised that she knew exactly what was bothering them. “You can’t make it worse.”

“I could damage something else by mistake,” they protested.

“That’s only happened once,” Mels said. “Even if it happened again, we have enough parts that you could fix it.” 

Puller’s hands tightened on the sledge. “What if I can’t fix you at all? I’m not a mechanic.” 

“You could pull my memory core and install me in another ship,” Mellyra said, far too unbothered by the idea. “I might lose data, but it’s a solid backup plan.”

Puller frowned. “What do you mean, ‘lose data’?”

“Most of my data is stored in my central core, but some of it has spread out to auxiliary drives, especially things related to flight,” she explained.” If you reinstalled me, I’d most likely have to learn how to fly again. Maybe some other things, too; I haven’t done a full inventory on where everything is.” 

Puller’s throat tightened. “That sounds like a long recovery. I don’t want that to happen to you!”

“Don’t worry,” Mellyra said. “As far as worst-case scenarios go, it’s not very bad. Really, even without being able to fly right now I’m better off than I’ve ever been.” 

“Grounded in the middle of nowhere is the best you’ve ever been?” Puller said in horror. 

"I’m not just grounded in the middle of nowhere," Mellyra assured them. "I’m out of that damn canyon, for one thing. The important things are that I have safe harbor, plenty of fuel, and a good friend. I've never had a friend before. I’m happy.” 

Heart lurching in a new direction, Puller bit their lip. “I’m glad.” Making Mels happy was one of their top priorities, lately.

They tried not to dwell on that too much.

They shook themself, clapped their hands together, tried to capture the energy of scrambling for a dogfight. “Okay, I’m good. What first?”

Mels told them which panels to open, which pieces of hull had to be removed, which joints needed to be unwelded. Puller had long since attached the holocomm to their helmet, the better for Mellyra to see what they were doing, and she guided them through every step of the process. Puller tried to remember they were doing repairs and not surgery, that Mels couldn’t feel pain, that she knew what to do.

The longer they worked, the more comfortable they got with the tools, and by the time they were almost done melting through the first joint, their misgivings had folded up quietly in the back of their head. They spend the rest of the procedure focused entirely on Mels’s chassis, her voice, and what their hands were doing. 

When all the un-welding was done, they got to work on the bolts. Those went faster, and then they could use a prybar to make the separation, pushing the strut away from Mellyra’s frame and letting the hoversledge take the weight. Then they maneuvered it away and down.

“Done!” Puller smiled. “And everything's in good shape!”

“I told you you could do it,” Mels said, happy. “Didn’t I tell you that?”

Laughing, Puller patted her nose, delighted when she nudged their hand in response. “Yeah, yeah, lord it over me.”

They cracked their neck and stood up to get some water, and that’s when they noticed the sun was almost setting. “Kriff, how long did that take?”

“Six hours and twenty-eight minutes.” 

Puller whistled. “I really lost track of time. Usually only do that in the cockpit.” 

“Let’s wait until tomorrow to start welding the new one on,” Mellyra said.

Puller didn’t argue. They were tired and it’s not like either of them were going anywhere. “I’ll go clean up and then come back out with dinner, eh?”

“Sure,” she said. “Do you mind if I stay off the comm? There are some simulations I want to run.” 

“‘Course. See you in a bit.” 

Still feeling odd about the day having gotten away from them, Puller climbed back up to the airlock (the route now boasting a series of handholds and extra steps made of junk) just like they had every evening for weeks. When they entered the ship and the full lighting flicked on, they stopped, staring.

During the crash, there hadn’t been anything in the corridor — nothing to damage it. Once Puller had fixed the lights, it looked exactly as it had since Puller had been stationed on the _ Bastion, _almost six months before. It looked the same, but to Puller it felt like a dream, like something was wrong but they couldn’t tell what. 

If the corridor was the same, then the difference had to be with Puller. 

Puller scoffed. Of course it was. They wanted to call a Separatist droid to talk about a spooky feeling they were having. It would be hard for any clone to get farther from their original mindset.

Turning a corner onto a wider corridor, this one with plenty of damage from the crash, made them relax.

“Seriously?” they said aloud. “You’re glad about the damage? Why? Because it’s familiar now? No, that doesn’t sound right,” they sighed. “Maybe it helps me handle being alone in here? Don’t think about what it was like before, can’t miss what it was like before. That at least makes sense.” 

They made a few more turns, going deeper into the ship, and then they were in their ‘home base’ barracks. “Okay, big philosophical questions on hold, time to clean up.” They stripped, tossed their clothes onto the bunk next to the one they slept on (when they weren't sleeping outside) and went to the ‘fresher.

They were making for the showers, but they stopped when they caught their reflection in the wide mirror over the sinks. 

They looked at themself every day, but now the changes since the crash seemed to stand out: their face and arms were darker than they’d ever been before, their hair had grown some, and, about a week prior, they’d become proficient with the eye pencil.

They’d been especially pleased with their job of it that morning. The sweat of the day had softened the edges of the line a little, but the stuff was remarkably resilient. They batted their eyelashes at their reflection for good measure and grinned. “Yup, still looking good.” 

And, if they were thinking about changes, they’d looked at themself every day before the crash, too, alongside all the other clones in their barracks. They had a few memories of good conversations they’d had while shaving, and a solid, vague familiarity built up from hundreds of daily repetitions. 

For the first time, they thought about the specifics of what it would be like when they went back. They looked at their reflection and imagined other clones around.

Or, well, they tried. Because they could remember the past, and see what was real now, but…

The bottom dropped out of their stomach. “Kriff. I don’t feel like I belong with the Fleet anymore.” 

They hurried past the mirrors and started the water in the showers. “No, that can’t be right. I’m still an ARC trooper, aren’t I? Sure I haven’t flown or seen another trooper for a month, but my skills are still there. After I’m done fixing Mels I’ll get one of the ships in the hangar working and I’ll be back soon.” 

It was a thought they’d had hundreds of times since the crash, but now, instead of feeling hopeful, the idea settled over Puller with a deep sense of dread. They fumbled the soap.

“Do I...do I not _ want _to go back?” They stood motionless in the stream of water, stunned. Such an idea had always been unthinkable, but now… 

Once they'd started thinking about it, they couldn't stop.

“For one thing, Mels can’t go with me. She’d get shot down in seconds. I’d rather be stuck here forever than get her killed.” Even before they’d understood the depth of their feelings for her, Puller had been willing to put helping Mellyra over their own return. Now, after all they’d done for each other, all they’d been to each other, of course they’d choose her life over civilization. 

But even if Mellyra was somehow safe— what then? In Puller’s dream galaxy, where Mellyra could join them in the Fleet, how did they feel?

Not wanting to fight for the Republic had never occurred to them before; even when they were full of wounded anger at whoever had ordered the destruction of Cabbio, they hadn’t let themself think about not going back. That was desertion. Treason. It was against everything every clone stood for, against the very nature of who Puller was.

Or was it? How could they say their nature was a Republic soldier when they hadn't fought for the Republic in a month? When they'd been freely aiding an enemy soldier? Kriff, when they were more worried about Mellyra's safety than if they ever saw their sibs again? So, no, apparently who they were at the core of their being didn't have much to do with the Republic at all.

The thought sent a chill of danger through them; nothing happened. The water kept washing over them, the soap stayed in the lower corner of the room, and absolutely no Jedi leapt out of the ventilation system to smite Puller. 

They were no longer loyal to the Republic. They hadn’t been for weeks, actually, but they hadn’t even let themself think it until now. It had been too big, too scary, and only the strange mood Puller was in thanks to the repair marathon was letting them face it at all. 

If they really thought about it, they’d never had a good reason to be loyal to the Republic in the first place. Just a pretty story all the clones were told over and over as they grew, trained, fought, died.

They thought about all the bad calls that Command had made. How their sibs’ lives had been thrown against the war just like the Separatists threw vulture droids against star destroyers.

They carefully made their way to the bottom corner of the showers and picked up the soap.

“Kriff all of that. I’m not going back.” 

They finished getting clean, turned the water off, and toweled dry. Got dressed. Put together their overnight pack, even tossing in a bottle of wine they’d found in officers’ quarters earlier.

They went back through the comfortably wrecked corridors and the unnervingly pristine one. Through the airlock, outside, down the makeshift stairs. 

Down to Mellyra. Down to the first real choice they’d ever made.

* * *

Puller took a bit longer than usual in their evening routine, but Mellyra had only started to consider calling them when they appeared at the airlock and climbed down. 

They set the pack down at the edge of Mellyra’s area, pulled out a bottle, and waved it around with a grin. “Look what I found!”

Mellyra read the label. “Shuura wine?” Her games had a few mentions of wine, and a few more images of bottles of similar shape, but she didn’t have much data beyond that. Puller seemed excited, at any rate. “You like it?”

“Never had it before,” Puller said, “but I like other kinds of wine, and it’ll be very nice to unwind a little.” 

Mellyra checked the term against her files, and was reminded that a large subset of organics enjoyed mildly poisoning themselves. She hoped Puller becoming intoxicated would be at least a neutral experience.

Puller set up the firebox and the rations. Then they used a screwdriver to open the bottle. Took a drink.

“Hmm, not as good as the Dantooine wine, but it’s loads better than that rotgut Formation cooked up!” Puller grinned at Mellyra. They’d left traces of the temporary colors on their face. It made them look a bit more tired, but also, somehow, softer. 

Puller drank as the two of them talked. When they’d consumed about a third of the bottle, Mellyra’s infrared sensors registered an eighteen percent increase of heat in Puller’s cheeks and chest. They also moved with less precision and smiled more. Mellyra hadn’t drawn conclusions about the other symptoms of wine, but she’d loved Puller’s smile from the first time she saw it, and decided that so far, she approved of alcohol.

When the food was ready, Puller ate, and then drank a little more. As the sky was darkening, they came in close, sat on the ground under Mellyra, and leaned against one of her struts.

Mellyra froze. “Don’t do that. I could step on you.” 

“Nah, you aren’t clumsy,” they said with perfect confidence.

Perhaps the wine had affected their judgement. That was definitely a drawback. “I’d rather not worry about it.” 

Puller stood up, thought they stayed leaning against Mellyra. “I’ll move in a sec. I just like being close.”

“I do too,” Mellyra said, pleased. “But I really could hurt you.” She considered. “You could sit on my fuselage instead.”

When they spoke, their voice was hesitant. “You’d be alright with that?”

“Of course.”

Puller moved then, walking a short distance away. Mellyra used her repulsorlift to get into the air, then brought her struts into flight position and lowered herself to the ground. Lying with her belly scraping earth was not her favorite configuration, but she didn't mind if it meant more contact with Puller. 

When she was settled, Puller approached. They jumped up onto the flat curve of her forward fuselage and scooted up the right side until they were next to Mellyra’s head. They were barely in her field of vision and far too close to focus on, but she liked having them there nonetheless. 

“Ready?”

“Yep.” 

Mellyra lifted up slowly. Puller didn’t weigh much compared to her, but her repulsorlift was finely-calibrated enough that the added drag on her right side meant she needed to adjust the power output to compensate. Strangely, she didn’t find that tiresome or uncomfortable; in fact, it was surprisingly pleasant, feeling Puller on her chassis. 

She carefully set down into standing, and lost Puller’s immediate sensory input. When she wasn’t in the air, she could only feel them via secondary vibrations picked up by her drag sensors. She almost wanted to hover again, just to feel them more clearly, but knew that was a foolish waste of fuel. 

Nor could she detect them with her heat sensors. She’d never regretted their calibration for carboplast-threatening temperatures before, but now she found herself wishing that she could feel, as well as see, Puller’s heat signature. 

At least she wasn’t worried about accidentally hurting them anymore. She cut the engines, and then there were only the sounds of the desert evening.

“This is nice,” Puller said quietly after a few minutes. “Alright if I lie down?”

“Yes.” She liked it better, actually, because with more surface area contact they were less likely to fall. Additionally, it meant that it was most natural for Puller to look at the sky, so she felt on more even footing as far as visual input went.

“Maybe this is the wine talking, but I think the stars here are prettier than on a big ship. Prettier than when I’m flying, even. Maybe it’s better when you’re not behind transparisteel.”

“I find the atmospheric distortion aesthetically pleasing,” Mellyra said, keeping her voice soft to match the feeling the moment was generating in her central processor. “The way the stars look like they’re getting brighter and dimmer.” 

“Mm, yeah, I like that too.” 

They watched the sky deepen further, watched more stars emerge. After a few minutes, Mellyra heard Puller changing position. When she swivelled her head to look, they were curled on their side towards her. Their face was a blur, but she thought it was probably a safe assumption that they were looking at her. 

Though she couldn’t really see them, she couldn’t bring herself to look away, either.

“You ever wonder,” Puller said slowly, “what it would be like if we could link our minds like you used to with your swarm?”

Five processes started at once, and Mellyra barely managed to catch the next thing Puller said. “Maybe I’d be too chaotic for you, I dunno. Or too...squishy.” 

Pausing her surges of surprise, affection, hope, and a new feeling she didn’t have a name for, Mellyra let her curiosity proceed. 

“I don’t think so. Assuming an interface was possible,” she said, and it theoretically was, “You’re like a good hyperjump. You’re careful while you’re making calculations and finding a vector, and then you leap. I can’t always predict what you’re going to do, but you never crash and always get where you want to go. You make perfect sense to me.” 

Silence. Mellyra started to worry she’d picked the wrong emotion for the conversation, and wished she could make out Puller’s expression.

“Sorry, I,” Puller started, their voice rife with enough emotional undertones that Mellyra estimated she would need at least four playthroughs to identify all of them. They took a breath and sat up. “I’m, uh. Hang on.” 

Mellyra could worry, or she could analyze, so she opted to do two replays while Puller recovered. She identified surprise, happiness, and affection, and that helped her to relax a bit. There were still more unknown elements in Puller’s voice, but she at least hadn’t made a complete mess of things. 

“Sorry,” Puller said again. “Got a bit emotional. That was one of the nicest...no, that was _ the _nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me, Mels. Thank you.” 

“It’s just the truth,” she said, and deactivated her control subroutine to enjoy the happiness overrunning her processors. “So. You’ve thought about it? If we could link?”

They laughed. “Ah, yeah, you know, just idle speculation, really.” 

“What do you think it would be like?” she prompted, hoping that they’d say something even half as pleasing as her comment had turned out to be.

“You’re like music,” Puller said, voice soft, warm. “Everything planned out, mathematically precise, and it all makes something beautiful.” 

Joy exploded in Mellyra’s processors and rushed through her circuits, prioritizing itself over all non-essential processes, maxing out her operations per second and drawing power as fast as her hardware allowed. Feeling it was the only thing she could do for almost twenty seconds.

“Mels?” Puller said, hesitant. “I’m sorry if that was weird—”

“No!” she said. Puller thinking they’d done something wrong was unacceptable. “No, it was wonderful! It’s, oh, it’s embarrassing, but I just couldn’t process anything else with how happy it made me.”

Puller sighed in relief, and she heard a smile in their voice when they spoke. “Guess we’re both emotional tonight, eh?”

“That’s not a bad thing.” 

“Not at all.” 

They chatted for a little while longer about stars, Formation’s unfortunate experiments in brewing, and ship components. Then it was time for Puller to sleep. 

Mellyra set down on the ground again, and Puller slid off.

It was a little ridiculous that Mellyra regretted that. Of course Puller couldn’t sleep on her fuselage. She should have been content that Puller set up their fabric cocoon next to the supplies, just far enough that Mellyra could see them in perfect clarity. 

“Good night, Mels,” they yawned, and another burst of affection fizzled through Mellyra’s circuits.

“Good night, Puller.”

* * *

Over the next nine days of replacing Mellyra’s strut and getting her propulsion systems working, Puller somehow managed not to repeat the near-confession and kept their most intense feelings for Mellyra to themself. Avoiding the wine helped, as did sleeping in the _ Bastion _more nights than not, even if they did miss Mels terribly.

Romance, they decided, had some serious drawbacks. For example, on the tenth day, Puller woke with very mixed feelings. They tried to focus on their happiness for Mels, and not on their selfish hopes and fears, but it was hard. 

After dressing, they flicked on the helmet comm. “Morning, Mels!”

“Good morning, Puller!” Mellyra was even more cheerful than normal, and Puller couldn’t help but smile. “Did you sleep well?”

“Not bad.” Which was maybe only technically true; they’d had worse nights, but not often. Dreaming about Mellyra flying away and never coming back hadn’t been terribly restful. “How was your night?”

“A small reptile climbed me and rested on my engine compartment. I think it liked the heat.” 

“No scratches, I hope?”

“No, it had sticky feet,” she said, happy.

Puller smiled. “Glad to hear it.” 

They ate a ration bar in a few bites on the way down to Mellyra, and then they got to work calibrating her power regulators. After that, it was time for the thirty-four point inspection of her flight systems.

Three hours and a few mechanical adjustments later, Puller closed the last access panel, cracked their back, and laid a hand on Mellyra’s fuselage, her carboplast warm from the desert sun.

“I’ve got the long-range comm receiving,” they reminded her. “I won’t be able to answer, but if you have a problem you can call for help.” 

“Everything is within operating parameters,” she said. “I don’t anticipate any problems.” 

Swallowing their anxiety. Puller gave her a pat and retreated to the edge to the work area. “Alright, Mels, try out your new wings.” 

Like they’d seen her do dozens of times, Mellyra easily repulsored off the ground. This time, however, she didn’t just hover or settle into standing. 

This time, she flew.

Engines humming, Mellyra shot past Puller, kicking up wind and dust, and climbed into the sky. She kept a relatively tight radius around the _ Bastion, _probably to ensure two-way comms, and Puller turned on their heels to follow her progress. It was no time at all before she zoomed past again.

“I’m FLYING!” Mellyra was giddy, excited and joyful. 

Puller grinned and cheered her on. “You’re doing great, Mels!” 

“I’m going to test all the flight controls,” she said, and then she pulled up suddenly, rocketing upwards almost perpendicular to the ground, growing smaller and smaller in Puller’s sight. Then she banked, another hard turn, and headed south. 

As suddenly as all of her other test moves so far, Mellyra broke into a spinning dive, her trajectory growing more and more parallel to the planet’s surface, and more and more on a vector back towards the _ Bastion _. A few dozen meters below the minimum altitude Puller themself would willingly fly, she leveled out, and then she was dancing an evasive maneuver (one that Puller started, and then refused, to remember in other contexts). A few seconds later, she shot directly overhead and then pulled up and back in a triple loop that corkscrewed her higher and higher, the wind and engine noise and sheer elegant power of her hitting Puller with a whole-body thrill.

“Everything works!” Mellyra whooped. “Thank you so much, Puller!”

It felt like she was towing Puller’s heart into the upper atmosphere with her, and they laughed for joy. “You’re so welcome, Mels! I’m glad I could help.”

“I’m going to see how fast I can go in atmo!” Mellyra pointed herself northeast and shot off faster than ever before, accelerating until the sky split with the boom of her breaking the sound barrier. She was probably still accelerating after that, gone from Puller’s view within seconds.

It was the moment they’d been dreading.

Mellyra was going to come back, they told themself. In all likelihood, she was coming back. Coming back made a lot more sense than leaving. But Puller’s heart and guts weren’t listening to their brain at the moment, and they started to pace nervously while they waited for her to either return or call them on the long-range. 

“Thirty-five minutes of fuel, and she used up about three before she left,” Puller said to themself. “She knows her own limits, she’ll turn around before she’s half empty.” Unless she ran afoul of pirates, or the Republic came back to investigate the _ Bastion _. 

“Stop it,” Puller admonished themself. “She’ll be fine. You’re just a worrywart who needs to calm down.” 

They thought about going inside to get a closer look at the available hyperdrive rings, but wound up re-organizing the outdoor workspace again instead.

When they heard the scream of her engines overhead not ten minutes later, Puller let out a long breath and tried to loosen the tension in their shoulders. Before they’d done more than a roll or two, Mellyra was swooping up, hanging in mid-air, and landing gracefully on her feet. 

“Heard you break the sound barrier,” Puller said, aiming for relaxed. “How fast did you get?”

“I made it all the way up to three point seven sonic, but there was too much heat for me to stay there very long. Two point four sonic was much more comfortable and almost as thrilling.” 

Puller laughed. “Two point four is still faster than I’ve gone planetside. Most of my fancy flying has been in vacuum.” 

“I’d never flown in atmo before at all,” Mellyra said. “You should try it! I think you’ll like it, I really do.” 

Her enthusiasm was infectious. “Love to, but it’s gonna take time to get a ship up and running before I can.” 

“I’ll wait,” she said. “I want to fly with you, Puller.” 

“Yeah?” Puller’s heart did some loops of its own. “I’d like that.”

* * *

After the euphoria of her restored flight sank to manageable levels, Melyra and Puller were both pleased to confirm that she could easily fit through the _ Bastion _’s bay doors and maneuver inside the hangar, though there were parts of it she couldn’t stand in. She delighted in helping Puller lift Y-wings and ARC 170s and hyperdrive rings out of the jumbled heap at the fore of the hangar. Puller might have been able to do it with the hoversledge, but Mellyra was glad they didn’t have to try. 

And, of course, it meant she didn’t have to give up spending most of each day in Puller’s presence. She still wasn’t sure why that mattered to her; they could talk just as easily on the comm as in person. When they’d been working outside, with more potential threats, she’d thought it was because she wanted to be close enough to protect Puller if they needed it, but even in the relative safety of the hangar she still much preferred being within sight of each other.

She needed more data. She had no idea what kind, or where she’d get it, but in the meantime she’d keep observing and analyzing and maybe the right information would present itself. 

Sooner than she’d predicted, it did. A few days later, they’d sorted out the pile of ships, and were faced with an obstacle. 

“I don’t think we’re gonna be able to retrofit one of these for you,” Puller said gloomily. “These are all for craft with single wings, not double.” 

“Even if we had more materials and time, it would be horribly inefficient,” Mellyra agreed. Optics roving over the hangar, her processes sped up when she looked at the other ships. “I don’t think that will be a problem, though.” 

Puller scoffed. “How do you figure that?”

“Forget the ring,” Mellyra said, pleased with her idea. “Repair a Y-wing and reconfigure the controls for wireless access. Assuming my mag lock is within parameters, I’ll be able to fly the Y-wing remotely and dock with it if I want to leave the system.” 

Puller stared at the Y-wings, then started to nod slowly. “That should work,” they said. “Bloody brilliant, really.” They smiled up at Mellyra, the sight sending a burst of happiness through her systems. 

“I know, right?” Mellyra said, and was rewarded with Puller laughing, eliciting yet more positive feedback in her processors. 

Oh! Of course. She had to be within visual range to see Puller smile. That was a logical reason for her desire to stay close.

But then, if she followed the idea further, she couldn’t determine why she should enjoy looking at Puller, smiling or not. Her games and music depicted eight hundred and twelve scenarios of one sentient finding another visually pleasing, but many never explained why, and the ones that did only seemed to list physical features. While she could abstractly understand that organics found specific kinds of physical traits attractive for reasons of reproductive biology, she had no idea why one part of the phenomenon should apply to her while the other was impossible. 

Wait. Was she…? 

A quick review of her reactions to Puller’s smiles, proximity, touches, and compliments, and… yes. All evidence suggested that she was experiencing attraction. She’d begun experiencing it from the first time she saw Puller’s face, though the strongest instance had been when they compared her to music.

Stars. This was entirely unhelpful.

* * *

Mellyra’s Y-wing took twelve days to repair (less time than it might have since they could ignore life support systems) and two to fit it with remote controls. The tricky bit was securing the wireless frequency, but Mels took care of that while Puller slept. 

Two weeks after Mellyra had regained her flight capabilities, Puller again watched anxiously as she tested the new setup. It was eerie and beautiful to see her fly in perfect sync with the Y-wing, two ships controlled by the same mind. The two ships docking belly-to-belly looked a little odd, but they didn’t need to impress anyone, just fly.

Then Puller started in on a second Y-wing for themself. This time they were going to make sure everything worked, from the vacuum seal to the ejection seat to the flight instruments to the propulsion to the weapons. 

If they wound up alone, they were going to need all available resources. 

After she’d helped Puller with the heavy lifting, Mellyra could go where she wanted and still give remote instructions over the comm. It became rapidly apparent how stressful it had been for her to be immobile, given how happy she was in flight, and it made something in Puller’s chest ache to think about.

They were working on the electrical relays when Mellyra’s shadow appeared in the open hangar bay, and then she was hovering above the deck. 

“Welcome back!” Puller called, still deep in their task. “Have a nice flight?”

“Well…” Mels said, but she didn’t finish. 

Puller looked up at the ambiguity in her tone, and then dropped everything to scramble up and go to her. She still hadn’t touched down because there was an astromech mag-locked to her belly.

“Arthree!” Puller felt elation, and then, as they got close enough to see the state their old friend was in, cold fear. R3’s main body was intact, but one of her struts was clinging to Mels about a meter away from the rest of her, and her dome wasn’t sitting right. On top of all that were scorch marks, probably from atmo entry, and cracked optics. “Oh no no no, you’ve gotta be okay, mate, we found you, we’re gonna fix you.” 

Mellyra lowered herself until she was almost scraping R3 against the deck, then released her mag-lock. R3 and her parts fell the short remaining distance with a clatter. Then Mels pulled back into standing, looking down at Puller and the sad pile of droid. 

Puller kneeled down to check R3 over.

“Get the interface,” Mellyra said softly. “I’ll walk you through a diagnostic.” 

Sniffing and wiping their eyes, Puller nodded. “Right, yeah.” 

Twenty minutes later, Puller was holding the interface so Mellyra could see it, heart in their throat.

“Her core is intact!” she said, happy. “You’ll have to get her new circuits to reconnect her to her chassis, but you’ll be able to reactivate her, Puller.” 

Puller slumped against a crate in relief. “Stars, I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed her, and then seeing her like this...I’m so glad she’s okay.” They let out a long breath and looked back over their shoulder at Mels. “Thank you for helping with this, and finding her.”

“I’ve never gotten to rescue anyone before,” she said, still subdued. “I like it.” 

“What are you on about?” Puller stood up so they could face Mellyra without craning their neck. “You rescued me.” 

“You mean in the canyon?” Mellyra said, head tilting in surprise. “That was preventing harm, not significantly improving your situation.” 

Puller shook their head. “I consider it a rescue, but not just that. I meant…”

_ Make the calculations. _Was this the right time? Since they’d finished repairs, Mels was free. She had flight and hyperdrive.

Puller was more certain than ever about what they wanted. And Mels seemed to value their friendship. There was a chance she’d want the same thing.

“I meant I’d probably have gone mad if I’d been alone here. With anyone else I could have at least held myself together, but with you…” They looked away.

_ Make the calculations, find your trajectory. _

_ Jump. _

* * *

Once Puller could work on their own for long stretches of time, Mellyra had been looking for R3. She was out there somewhere, and having been pulled out of a canyon and repaired, Mellyra wanted to pass the favor on. 

When she found the little mech, R3 was inert and in pieces at the foot of a plateau three klicks from Puller’s parachute. Mellyra had to spend almost ten minutes looking for R3’s detached strut, sadness and worry and hope competing for her computing cycles. 

Finding out later that R3 was still safe in her datacore was a huge relief, and Mellyra was happy, even if she had to immediately archive the desire to meet R3. She had no idea when Puller would leave, or if they’d fix R3 before or after that.

But then Puller was saying she’d rescued them. She hadn’t known she’d made that much of a difference for them, and she felt...she wasn’t sure. Like being a hub in the swarm network; like the stars were spinning around her. Attraction was involved, but wasn’t anywhere near the whole of what she was feeling.

And then Puller kept going. “With you, I’m happier than I’ve ever been,” Puller said, beautiful warm eyes looking up at her seriously. “I really care about you, Mels. I want to stay with you, for as long as you'll have me.”

The force of Mellyra’s surprise pushed her back a step before her control subroutine could address it. She’d been so sure that Puller would leave, but they wanted — they wanted to stay? They wanted to stay! They wanted to stay with _ her _! She was going to get to fly with them, and more than just once, maybe much more! And the way they were looking at her, with care and hope and complete attention, only launched her spirits yet higher.

Control subroutine offline, she almost threw herself into the air to fly a victory lap around the _ Bastion _, but then her analytical process reasserted themselves.

“Puller, you’re sure?” Any time they mentioned the other clones, their grief was apparent enough that Mellyra experienced sympathetic negative feedback. “You miss your siblings so much.”

Puller nodded solemnly. “I’ve thought about it a lot,” they said, and looked away. “I... don’t think I’d fit in anymore. After Cabbio, I don’t want to.” They looked back up at Mellyra, gaze and voice steady. “I’m not going back. If you’ll have me, I’m staying with you.”

“Yes!” Her voice was humming, almost buzzing. “Yes, I want that too!”

And, oh, she’d thought she couldn’t feel any more elation, but then Puller smiled. She treasured all of their smiles, but this one was different. If Puller’s other smiles had felt like banking in a perfect parabolic arc, this one was a flawlessly executed triple loop.

Her joy took over her predictive algorithms and those hijacked her verbal processes. “We should go somewhere else. The Republic’s going to come back sooner or later, and you should have more friends, and we’re going to run out of supplies in eight to ten months, unless my calculations are off or if something happens—”

Puller held up a hand. “Don’t worry, I agree with you.” Then they smiled again — softer than the previous one, but it was still at least a barrel roll. “We’ll find a good place. Somewhere with enough supplies and people, where no one’s shooting anyone.”

“Yes!” The idea of planning a future together brought the giddiness back, and with it, all the longing she’d felt over the last month. “I don’t want to wait any more. Come fly with me, Puller.”

"I'd love to."

It was easy enough to switch the Y-wing back from remote to manual control, and the life support was good enough for atmo, so Puller suited up and got into the cockpit.

“Been a while since I flew a Y-wing,” Puller said over the comm. “Stars, it’s been a while since I flew anything. Don’t laugh if I’m rusty.” 

“Never.” She’d heard too much passion and longing in Puller’s voice to even consider laughing at their flying.

“Okay. Starting pre-flight checklist.” 

Puller talked themself through the list of changes they had to make to the controls to take the ship from grounded to flying, and Mellyra found herself fascinated. It was a learned, external version of the scripts in her software that completed her own flight sequence correctly. What for her could happen in a few seconds took Puller a few minutes, but it was remarkable that a being without direct access to controls could fly at all. It reminded her that it had been organics, a long time ago, who had invented ships and droids both.

That reminded her that in the CIS fleet, she’d thought of her orders as coming from the droid commanders flying the carrier. But they’d taken orders too, hadn’t they, and eventually, the chain stopped not at some supreme synthetic intelligence, but with organic generals and admirals. To them, she was nothing more than a tool, a thing to be used and discarded when no longer needed. It was what happened to all droids, even those intended for non-military use.

Except, maybe not Mellyra, not anymore. 

As the Y-wing’s engines warmed up, she watched Puller through the transparisteel of the canopy. They ran through a double-check of all their settings, and then, “I’m ready when you are, Mels.” 

A pulse of happiness surged through Mellyra, and she launched into the air. “Come on!”

As she climbed at a moderate pace, she heard the Y-wing’s engines behind her, and Puller’s voice in her comm, each word a sigh of relief. “Oh, I have _ missed _this.” 

Mellyra couldn’t contain herself any longer, and in a burst of speed surged ahead, whooping in joy, circling back. Puller was laughing.

After Puller had run through a test of the controls — “No sense barreling in half-charged” — they accelerated to catch up to Mellyra, and then, grinning at her, kept going. 

“Let’s go!”

She easily caught up to Puller, then slowed to keep pace with them for a while, loving the feel of the air over her chassis and the sight of the landscape pouring by underneath them in hundreds of different wavelengths.

Puller seemed to agree. “It’s really beautiful from up here. Look at the way the canyons catch the light.” 

“Yes,” Mellyra said. “It’s too bad we had to see so much of it from the ground.” 

Puller chuckled. “No kidding.” And then, “Hmm, I wonder…” and they banked to the west. 

Mellyra followed, and soon they were coming up on the largest canyon of all, the one that reached almost half a kilometer across in places. It was lovely, layers and layers of different colors and textures of stone, the glint of water far below. 

“You wanna go in?” Puller asked.

“I think,” Mellyra said after a moment, “that your risk assessment is faulty.” 

Puller laughed. “Not the first time I’ve been called crazy, but it’ll be fine. The turns aren’t that sharp, eh? And we don’t have to go too fast, just enough to make it exciting.” 

It _ did _sound fun.

“Okay,” Mellyra said, privately making plans to mag-lock to the Y-wing and drag Puller to safety if she had to.

The two ships descended at a shallow angle, canyon rising up almost gently to meet and enfold them. Puller had slowed, as promised, but they still whooped as they wove a path between the canyon walls. 

Mellyra had to admit that it was thrilling, even if a very insistent process wouldn’t allow her to let the Y-wing get very far ahead. And after another few kilometers, Melyra started to relax and enjoy herself. Puller was having such a good time, and the canyon was an excellent new experience, and they were doing it together. It was the companionship and joy she felt when she was singing with Puller, but those feelings were combining with the fulfilled directive of flight to create a new emotion, one she couldn’t define but cherished all the same.

She wanted to see if she could get more of it.

“Let’s go higher,” she said once Puller was no longer cheering at every bend in the canyon. “I want to try something.” 

Puller opened the throttle as they pulled up, and as the two of them climbed together, Mellyra explained. 

“I’ve never tried anything like that, but it sounds fun,” Puller said. “Go ahead.” 

Mellyra knew the hardware capabilities of the Y-wing very well, having flown it herself, and it was definitely not as maneuverable as she was; she’d also expected, due to the delay inherent in the organic process of translating neural impulses into movement into controls into vehicle response, that flying with Puller wouldn’t be like flying with her swarm, and she’d taken that into account when making her plans. So as Puller kept to the same vector, Mellyra banked away, circled around, and then came back towards them. When she was close, she executed a neat sideways loop entirely around the Y-wing and peeled off to the other side. 

It was a good move: it didn’t strain the Y-wing’s hardware or force Puller’s reflexes to their limits, and, equally importantly, it was fun.

“Yeah, Mels!” Puller cheered. “That was great! Let’s do it again!”

Giggling, she complied, swooping back in the other direction, the next repetition producing just as much enjoyment as the first.

“Okay, one more,” Puller said, excitement audible. “Dance with me, Mels.” 

This time, as she began the loop, Puller rolled, and their smile became the center of Mellyra’s perception as the sky and earth wheeled around them both. The euphoria generated by her processors lit up what felt like every last one of her circuits, and she shrieked in delight as she completed the loop and peeled off. “THAT WAS AMAZING!”

“Yeah,” Puller breathed, sounding almost stunned. “Yeah, it was.” 

They did that three more times and tried other moves. Some, Mellyra had already thought of, like coming together, not side-by-side but with Mellyra upside-down above Puller, to complete a big, slow arc before separating again; some, Puller came up with on the spot, like Mellyra flying a long spiral loop whose center Puller threaded like a needle; and some, they invented together, like flying in intertwined, rising spirals.

She never even worried about colliding with a ship that she couldn’t access on a network; somehow, without any direct connection at all, she could still see what Puller was going to do. 

They had only the Y-wing and the comm, but she could feel Puller in her mind.

She hadn’t predicted that. It had been vanishingly unlikely that she’d find connection with another in flight outside of a VGSPBD swarm. She’d given up on reclaiming that essential part of herself, assuming it was gone forever, but she’d gotten it back.

She thought about all the songs she knew, and then she started to sing. 

“Madam Chelchuu’s pies were the glory of the town,” she began, and on the next line, Puller joined her, the smile audible in their voice. 

As the two of them sang and flew, the rhythm of their maneuvers matching the beat of the song, Mellyra opened her startup protocols. She rewrote them, changing which data they would access first in her boot cycle. No longer would they bring up her original programming; now they would find her name, her emotions, her games and music. They'd find all of her important memories: flying with her swarm, her first moments of individuality, everything she’d experienced with Puller. They'd find everything that was _ her _. 

The next time she woke up, she would be Mellyra from the first nanosecond.

**Author's Note:**

> BEHOLD: There is [art of these two cuties](https://bright-elen.tumblr.com/post/187144810274/daryshkart-star-wars-prequel-oc-commision-done)  
and it's BEAUTIFUL!!!!


End file.
